Mentor Voyatzakis (He/Him)
Architectural decision-making has the capacity to foster a political, social and cultural outlook understood through spatial experiences. During my undergraduate studies, I developed an interest in how human sensory mechanisms contribute towards the perception of a user inhabiting a space. Architecture shouldn’t impose a particular program but stand empathetically, and engage with the occupant’s senses according to a general use. A ‘co-creation’ of spatial experience emerges through the curation of light and sound in relation to the user’s actions. When a perceiver is integral to the atmosphere of a space, I believe, a sense of belonging and environmental awareness can put the user in a position to take responsibility. I strive for a ‘belonging’ where one’s spatial experience is a consequence of construction and the structure is integral to material qualities.
How will the profession continue to address the local while integrating into global cycles? I seek to develop an approach where architecture is derived from regional environmental conditions curated for the human sensory experience, resulting in a culturally-inclusive celebration of each place.
Projects
‘Spaces for Ideas’
Space engages with a user’s sensory perception and empowers a mental state. Three located regions of the site: ‘on the ground’, ‘between the tenements’ and ‘amongst the clouds’ have defined and divided the spatial qualities of the proposal, determining tectonic and programmatic compositions.
In a time of energy crisis and uncertainty towards our collective future, what should a civic building serve today? Working complimentary to the schools in Dennistoun the proposal aims to draw a bridge between education and work towards an attitude of taking responsibility.
Proposed are spaces for convincing and communicating ideas.
An architectural language of dualities resembles and sparks a sense of discourse: performance and practice, product and process are enveloped and stacked over each other. Visual and verbal communication, art and drama, are hosted in galleries and an auditorium that sit across the street from each other.
Surprisingly, the centre of the proposal is the street, now framed into a crossing. Untouched, it has been redefined. Reached out to the rest of Glasgow, it spreads new ideas.
