I shall not tell you what you should do and what architecture is. Frankly, I do not know. Nobody knows: even Tolstoy did not know how to construct the society of tomorrow. I do not know what the architecture of tomorrow will be. But we are all members of the same team and we should find out which plants, which flowers, which leaves, should grow better tomorrow. That is our problem.
Alvar Aalto, lecture at the AA in London, 1950.[1]
A few months ago the Slovenian architectural studio Bevk Perović Architects was awarded the prestigious European Union prize for contemporary architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award, in the category Emerging Architect. The jury explained that this award was granted for well articulated programmatic organisation and tactile treatment of the surfaces of the building – the Faculty of Mathematics – which means that it was granted for the building’s architectural merits.
[1] Alvar Aalto, “Finland Wonderland”, lecture at the Architectural Association in London, 1950. Published in: Göran Schildt, Alvar Aalto in his own Words, Helsinki, 1997, p. 184.