Now a new International VELUX Award is launched - and this time I will not take part.
Instead, I should like to take the opportunity to share with you some of the experiences the competition left with me and some of the thoughts it spawned.
As a student of architecture, you have many opportunities for getting about and seeing and experiencing, in many different ways, other cultures – and thereby other ways of thinking architecture.
You can go on study trips, where groups of you can see with your own eyes and discuss so-called foreign architecture. In this situation it is important to experience buildings in their context and thus become aware of something that transcends the individual building – the architectural traditions of the region, which the buildings you see, in one way or another, represent or consciously do not represent.
As a student you also have the chance to apply for a place abroad and study at architecture academies around the world and thereby come into contact with other students and different ways of teaching and creating architecture.
You can also apply for a job experience position in an architect’s studio and gain insight into the practical part of working as an architect. You could call this the real world.
And then you have the opportunity of taking part in international competitions. This gives you the chance to focus very precisely on one particular set of problems and solve them in the best possible way within the parameters of the competition.
These four different opportunities exist so that the architecture student can gain insight and experience in thinking, seeing, experiencing and creating architecture influenced by conditions, both economic and social, in other cultures and societies.
This opportunity is there for the taking.
In my case, it was the International VELUX Award 2006 that gave me the great opportunity of meeting other students from all over the world.
Last October, 20 of us met to take part in Bilbao – both as groups and individuals who had won or received mention of distinction. That chance to meet enthusiastic and ambitious students from the 17 countries we represented was invaluable.
Despite the fact that we had never met before, that first meeting triggered numerous questions and lively discussions. We greeted each other with curiosity and openness.
Overall you might say that we were bound together by architecture. We had all studied and worked with the importance of light in a space but from very different points of departure and with very different thoughts – and very much with the heritage of different cultures and thereby different architectural traditions.
Our common denominator was light – but the most interesting thing to observe was the difference in the way the various projects worked with light.
By meeting all these fantastic people, and seeing and hearing them talk about their projects, you experience, amongst so much else, what you may know well in theory but are less conscious of in practice – the architectural tradition of which we are all products.
And it is here, at this meeting, that we are made even more aware of what a long and spacious chain of thoughts we are all part of – and the world seems to be very tiny and absolutely huge at the same time.
At last, I should like to wish each and every one of you students taking part in the International VELUX Award 2008 the very best of luck.
Louise Grønlund
Louise Grønlund, 1st prize winner 2006