What do you think of architecture and which is the project that best represents you?

Architecture is a profession with many responsibilities.

As much as we can influence the improvement of the quality of someone's house or workplace, we can simultaneously destroy it. Imagine inadequate colour nuances in certain spaces which over time cause negative effects on people, imagine a bedroom without penetration of sunlight for someone suffering from respiratory or rheumatic diseases, imagine spaces without contrasts for people who have vision problems. Our impact is also on a global scale. A non-responsible design is one more problem in the chain of problems that are constantly affecting our planet Earth.

In our studio, what has been characterized since the beginning is teamwork. Each building is composed through a group work where everyone contributes their own idea.

My footprint can be seen in the generation of concepts, compositions and in particular in the relationship between the building and its surrounding space or landscape.

If we consider the message that the building gives, then the Regional Library in Gjakova will be able to represent me: through the elimination of the monumentality that these buildings once represented, bringing it to a more humane scale and closer to man; through the dialogue between stone (extracted from the city's river), wood and greenery as the main features of architecture and especially the visibility of natural materials and simplicity in composition as resistance to the phenomenon of post-war architecture in Kosovo where the trend was the use of synthetic materials and turbo folk architectural style.

What advice would you give yourself at the beginning of your career, valid even for young architects or those girls/women who want to become architects? 

Doubt even more! It improves you.

 

Since we are living in a time of "Shock architecture" do not become a victim of bad models that come as a result of the egos of various investors who want to show their dominance through megalomaniacal projects and overloaded architecture.

Young architects need to understand the notion of "embodiment". They should study as much as possible the site for which they will design. To see it by involving all the senses and feel it. To project themselves in that place. To incarnate with it as much as possible because only in this way they will create an original building, a building which seems to have come out naturally and not hard 'planted'.

Also, not to become selfish in the idea of reflecting individuality in an imposing way, but that individuality, through the original features that came out of the embodiment, in their design to be composed in such a way that the building creates the impression that always has been there and will be for a long time.

Embodying and presenting individuality through the careful design of architectural elements is very important considering that we are entering in a new reality where human intelligence will merge with the intelligence of the machines. So "grab" the moment, because it will make you more privileged in relation to the next generations of Gen Z architects.