Architecture competition Trans Siberian Pit Stops 2nd prize winners - Jacopo Abbate and Martina Mitrovic

We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the 2nd prize winners of our Trans Siberian Pit Stops competition - Jacopo Abbate and Martina Mitrovic from Italy!

2nd prize winners Martina Mitrovic and Jacopo Abbate from Italy

Martina Mitrovic (Belgrade, SRB) and Jacopo Abbate (Milan, IT) graduated at Politecnico di Milano where they are now working as teaching assistants in an international design studio course. They are founders of HORDA, a young studio for architecture design and visualizations based in Milan and Belgrade.

Since we worked as interns and collaborators with several studios and offices, it was in our practice to often work on projects with different scales-from regulatory plans, building design, furniture design to pure architectural visualization and illustration. Even when the scale of the project is changing, when it comes to architectural design some of our approaches are stable and grounded on variability of constant research.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Architecture is a discipline produced by a collective knowledge that aims to transform or preserve the existing. That makes an architect the one that is supposed to perceive, analyze and understand the conditions of reality in order to responsibly work with it.

Why do you participate in architecture vision competitions?

Competition is in itself a challenge that is both exciting and capable to trigger creative processes. We believe this might be a combination that can lead to an interesting project.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture vision competitions?

Since competitions allow you to work in different contexts and to research about different architectural practices and backgrounds, each young architect should be able to find a topic of interest for personal research, and understand it as an opportunity to improve various skills.