48H Floorplan Battle COVID-19 Supermarket: Meet the Winner and Honourable Mentions!

WINNER: ONE LANE PALACE

by ALESSANDRO TAROLLI and TOMMASO TELLARINI

“Me and Alessandro were course mates during our Bachelor at Politecnico di Milano. Then, I carried on with a Master degree at TU Delft, Netherlands, where I’m currently undergoing my graduation project.
We really enjoyed participating in the 48h Floor Plan Battle. We had never participated in such a short-timed competition, and we really enjoyed it. We will surely try again!”

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Granary Factory

by Raphaël Fenoglio and Valentin Popescu

Valentin Popescu :
He graduated with a B.Sc in Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, after an exchange year at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland.
He is interested in philosophy, politics, media, cinema and is currently working at MVRDV in Rotterdam, after a period in Atelier Bow-wow in Tokyo.

Raphaël Fenoglio:
After a degree in Modern Letters, at the Sorbonne Paris, Raphaël Fenoglio entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, where he is currently doing a master’s degree. Particularly interested in transversal practices, notably writing and sculpture, he worked in Paris before joining MVRDV in Rotterdam.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Rooms

by Eric DE MELO

“I am a young Franco-Portuguese architect. I studied with Eric Lapierre and his collaborators at the Paris-Est School of Architecture where I obtained my diploma in 2018. After the master “Architecture and Experience”, I worked a year in Paris for the architecture firm Moreau Kusunoki. In october 2019, me and my collaborator Thibaut Brahic had the opportunity to participate in the Lisbon Trienal of Architecture where we get to present part of our thesis: “The type in Architecture”. After this first enriching experience, I decided to pursue my passion in Lisbon, where I currently practice architecture. While I was looking for a job I decided to participate in the 48h Floor Plan Battle competition. This experience was stimulating because of its short delay, but also because the architectural research around the question of the plan directly echoes my personal interrogations as an architect. On the other hand, the subject closely linked to the COVID-19 pandemic was a very relevant research medium because of what it brought in terms of disruption of our daily lives.”

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Antipandemic Capsules

by Jorge Andrés Álvarez Bernal and Manuela Molina Castro

Jorge: I graduated from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2019 and made an exchange semester in Germany at Leibniz Univertität Hannover. I’m currently working in Bogotá for Taller Architects.

Manuela: I graduated from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia in 2019 and made an exchange semester in Spain at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. I’m currently working for Rogelio Salmona’s office.

We met at the end of 2019 during an event hosted by Taller Architects, where Manuela did her internship back in 2018.

This competition was an interesting experience for us since we took it as an opportunity to break the routine given by the current worldwide pandemic and reflect upon this crisis. It was a great exercise to re-think the ways in which we can adapt to new living conditions. This pandemic affects almost every aspect of society and architecture, as an analytical, creative and purposeful discipline, has the capacity to give new ideas on how to rethink the spaces we inhabit.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: The Onion

by Robbie Tarakji and Elly Selby

The unique circumstances of this competition, the COVID-19 pandemic, presented a new, internationally accepted module– two metres or six feet– to be manipulated. For their team, this competition became a great opportunity to precipitate ideas about physical manifestations of social distancing, born from their recent lived experiences in Toronto.
The short time period meant rapidly producing and deconstructing parti, designing purely through plan, and simplifying conceptual nuances to the degree of legibility afforded by the required scale. Both Robbie and Elly can safely say, had the charette taken place over a longer period of time, their tendencies toward continual rethinking would have diluted the salience of their scheme.

Robbie Tarakji M.Arch, BA.
Robbie Tarakji is an OAA intern Architect based in Toronto, Canada
Robbie Completed his Master of Architecture at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. Designing spaces through an interpretive framework has been a conceptual thread throughout all his work. His thesis investigated the interaction between people, moments, and objects, where both the people and the spiritual space they occupy are in active dialogue. He studied the relationships between familiarity and occupancy with the intention of creating spaces of discovery. His research involved explorations in fabricating textiles, designing furniture, and making models that are manipulated by light.
Robbie continues to explore the tactility of the architectural object and is translating that to a focus on fashion design.

Elly Selby M.Arch, BA, LEED Green Associate
Elly Selby is an OAA Intern Architect based in Toronto, Canada.
Elly completed her Master of Architecture at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Her thesis focused on fidelity in architectural representation, sited in Verona, Italy, where she worked in 2018 at The Empire.
Thesis research involved experimentation in printmaking, filmmaking, and exhibition design – all of which Elly continues to pursue in her personal art and research practices.
Elly is interested in chance; in the slippages, errors, and gains that can occur during cross-pollination – of media and of disciplines.
Her broader research interests include: Architectural Representation and Photography, Modern and Postmodern Architectural Theory, Indexical Media, Authenticity and Fiction, Architectural & Art Curation.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: 30 Minutes Out Of Prison

by Felix Hahn

Felix Hahn is an architecture student from Berlin, Germany. After his bachelor’s degree in his hometown Saarbrücken, he worked two years for different architectural offices. Currently, he is doing his master’s degree at the Technical University of Berlin and is also freelancing on various projects, competitions and visualizations.

“I had a lot of fun during the 48h Floorplan Battle!
The relevance of the topic was one of the reasons for me to participate. Corona has led to lockdowns in many countries of the world. Aspects like not being allowed to leave the house, social distancing etc. have caused psychological stress for a lot of people. The walk to the supermarket therefore became the only possibility for many to get outside. To think about how a floor plan design can actually help to prevent viruses from being transmitted and people from feeling locked up while shopping was something I found very exciting.
Thanks a lot for the interesting topic and especially my honourable mention!”

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: THE ENORMOUS CLAW CRANE

by NIKHIL MAKHIJANI and NISHITA TALATIYA

We are students of Architecture from CEPT University, Ahmedabad an institution started by the Pritzker Laureate B.V.Doshi. With the world facing a crisis due to the current pandemic, the 48H competition gave us a chance to reinvent the current way of shopping which is an integral activity in daily life. The topic for the competition was fresh and being able to convey the design through just a plan in 48 hours was a challenge we enjoyed facing. The competition was our first experience with Non Architecture and it was undoubtedly great.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: TWO-FOR-ONE

by Anthony Iovino and Katie Shipman

Katie Shipman and Anthony Iovino are two designers based in Columbus, Ohio, USA. They studied together at the Knowlton School of Architecture where they received their B.S. ARCH in 2019. Katie currently works at the Columbus based architecture firm MKC Architects while Anthony is currently pursuing his Master’s Degree at Washington University in St. Louis. They say their work explores the role of representation in design and they really enjoy experimenting through drawing. Their drawing, Two_For_One, allowed them to continue exploring and pushing the role of representation specifically in ‘plan.’ While the competition’s strict guidelines allowed for only 48 hours, one plan drawing, and two colours, they fueled a highly focused discussion on the topic at hand: the Covid-19 Pandemic Super-Market. Participating in this competition was not only a graphic exercise but a critical thinking exercise that investigated the current global state and the future of our world and daily life.