Archcontest - Architecture and Design Competitions

1st Prize

Authors: Eleonora Bindellini, Asia Nicoletta Perotti, Martina Castellini
Country: Italia
Anosmia Room is a conceptual space inspired by a quantum paradox, where perception and reality overlap. Through the scent of indole—balanced between fragrance and decay—the project explores dualities such as life and death, attraction and repulsion.
As the visitor moves through the space, the architecture responds and destabilizes, dissolving the boundary between observer and environment and reflecting on the fragility of perception.

2st Prize

Authors: Cristina Borta, Raisa-Maria Cotuna, Lia Bulai
Country: Romania
The Threshold explores the idea of an invisible boundary between reality and possibility, inspired by the unfinished research of physicist Hiroshi Tanaka. The project imagines a latent space activated by the presence of the observer, where gravity and orientation lose their conventional meaning. Through a single symbolic access and the geometry of the torus, space becomes an unstable balance between being and non-being. The final passage is not physical but conceptual: crossing the threshold is an act of choice and courage.

3st Prize

Authors: Lilijana Gregov, Rowan Freeman, Julianne Cucos
Country: United States
The installation is a physical experiment on indeterminacy. Mobile walls, seemingly stable, respond to the actions of visitors, who involuntarily alter the space. Each interaction triggers unpredictable and irreversible changes, leading to the system’s gradual collapse.
Every configuration is unique and non-repeatable. Over time, the space compresses and closes in on itself, leaving visible traces of previous transformations. The project highlights how every choice produces a physical consequence within an environment designed to evolve, fail, and eventually come to an end.