Celebrating 15 years of
Buildner competitions

Architecture competitions are a great way to explore subjects we are passionate about, continue developing our creativity and enjoy working on ideas that we might not have the opportunity to address in everyday practice. They are also an excellent way to keep practicing, experimenting, and improving as designers.

From our point of view, architecture competitions are an opportunity to step outside the routines of everyday practice and explore ideas with greater freedom. They encourage experimentation, challenge us to test our own design approach, and allow us to engage with places, cultures, and architectural questions that we might not encounter in our daily work. The Iceland Slow Sauna competition was particularly appealing because of its unique setting and intimate scale, inviting a thoughtful response to both landscape and atmosphere. Competitions also provide a valuable space for collaboration. As this is our first competition as a team, it allowed us to develop ideas together, combine our individual perspectives, and discover how we complement each other throughout the design process. At the same time, competing alongside participants from around the world motivates us to continuously improve and learn from different ways of thinking about architecture. Regardless of the outcome, we believe every competition is worthwhile. Each project strengthens our design process, sharpens our ability to communicate ideas, and teaches us something new about architecture and ourselves. Every challenge becomes another step in our professional development, giving us greater confidence and a deeper understanding that we can carry into future projects. We see competitions as an essential part of our growth as architects and hope to continue participating regularly in the years to come.

For me, architecture competitions are more than a way to win projects. They are opportunities to challenge my own limits, refine my thinking, and continuously develop as an architect. Competitions are also an open platform for engaging with society, cities, the media, and the public through architecture. They allow us to respond to contemporary issues, communicate ideas, and explore new possibilities for architecture and the public realm.

Competitions allow us to continue an ongoing design dialogue beyond the constraints of commercial practice. They provide a space to experiment, test ideas and develop our own architectural voice. While recognition is rewarding, the process of exploring a clear idea from brief to proposal is what we value most.

One of the reasons I enjoy architecture competitions is that they allow me to explore ideas that don't always fit within everyday practice. They allow designers to work with greater freedom, respond to unfamiliar contexts, and place their ideas within an international architectural conversation. The Iceland Slow Sauna competition was especially interesting because the program was small, but it involved many different elements: heat, water, vegetation, weather, privacy, and landscape. Receiving an Honorable Mention was very encouraging, but I also valued the design process itself. It gave us the chance to think carefully about how such a small building could still create a rich spatial experience.

I participate in architecture competitions to be able to explore topics or develop skills that I am not currently otherwise working on.

Architecture competitions give designers the freedom to explore new building types, challenge conventions, and test ideas that may not be possible within the constraints of commercial projects. They create opportunities to experiment with new concepts, materials, and ways of thinking, pushing both the designer and the discipline forward.

We participate in architecture competitions because they offer a space for experimentation, research and reflection, beyond the constraints of a conventional commission. They allow us to test ideas, question our methods and develop architectural proposals with a strong conceptual and material focus. This competition is particularly meaningful to us because it deals with micro-architecture and the program of the sauna, two subjects that strongly resonate with our practice. We are interested in small-scale architectures where every decision becomes essential: the relationship to the site, the use of materials, the construction process, the atmosphere, and the experience of the body in space. The sauna is a program that we find especially rich, as it connects architecture to ritual, climate, materiality and sensory experience. It is a place where heat, light, texture, intimacy and landscape can come together in a very direct way. For us, this type of project is an opportunity to explore architecture at a concentrated scale, where simplicity, precision and sensitivity are fundamental.

Architecture competitions are an opportunity to collaborate, conduct research, and contribute to architectural discourse. They allow architects to explore questions that may not emerge within conventional commissions and to develop ideas that push beyond established norms. Often, speculative and unbuilt proposals become a means of revisiting, refining, and expanding upon ideas that emerge from longstanding interests and research. Even when a proposal is not realised, the concepts developed through competitions can continue to evolve, generate conversation, or find their way back into projects down the line.

We decided to participate in this architecture competition as an opportunity to challenge ourselves, think freely, and grow as future architects. As we approach graduation, it felt like the right moment to apply what we have learned in a real design context, explore ideas beyond the academic framework, and begin sharing our work with the architectural community.