Drawing of the year 2021: The winning collage enchants the jury with creative mix of media

The international student competition – supported by SHL Architects and VOLA – this year celebrated the collage. Norwegian student Trine Mellemstrand Jarstø – a present student at the Aarhus School of Architecture – has won it with an artistic work that combines digital and classic modes of drawing. See all the winners and special mentions here.

07.01.2021

Technical Temporality is the title of the winning collage which earns Trine Mellemstrand Jarstø the first prize in Drawing Of The Year 2021 along with €5,000. The jury draws a parallel to Asger Jorn’s famous painting, The Disturbing Duckling (1959) and highlights the clash between classic and digital in the collage.

“Trine Mellemstrand Jarstø´s collage elegantly disturbs our perception of a classical collage. By combining such different medias as aquarelle and point-cloud in one and the same drawing she creates a unique atmosphere of past and future, depicting a rural landscape where a bastant yet ephemeral architectural alien is about to explode – or implode? The striking use of colors, light and shadow emphasizes the strong composition of a remarkable collage – about to break on fire”, the jury writes.

Technical Temporality by Trine Mellemstrand Jarstø

Second prize goes to Stefan Pielmeier (GE), Technische Universität München and Aarhus School of Architecture, for Digital Flood, an all-out digital collage highlighting our consumption of social media and its impact on us as humans. The jury’s comment likens the collage to the decor for an online cathedral:

“In a momentary metaphor of how we live today, this highly controversial collage consisting exclusively of information from SoMe, I-phone messages and VR from the Dance Floor, caught the Jury´s attention. What is the role of the architect in an augmented reality? And who says the ´real world´ is more real than the virtual one? How do we create architecture for new digital realities, and how does the access to many temporalities affect our perception of the built environment? In addition to raising a number of questions the collage resembles a well composed digital triptych for an online cathedral where God is replaced with consumption.”

In “Making Questions’, the winner of third prize, Anna Guseva (RU), points to the centrality of the question in human culture (“Who are we?”). The jury notices “the strong evocative blend of art and architecture, in a cliché filled atmosphere that gives memories of Edward Hopper and American realism from the fifties, even if it is made in Russia – today. In a strong composition of foreground, middleground and background, the collage creates a certain drama out of a common, everyday scenery, offering narrative interpretations rather than architectural solutions.”

Special mentions

The jury would like to acknowledge the following five entries with a special mention:

´Time´ – Emma Skelander (SE), Aarhus School of Architecture
´City Tissue´ – Timur Abdrakhmanov (RU), Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering
´Devices, Detournements, Demonstrations; in reframing the polyphony of home´ – Eugene Tan (SIN), National University of Singapore
´Rainwater Reservoir of Shaula and Lesath´ – Evelyn Agren (USA), Aarhus School of Architecture
´How African Architecture Can Stay African´ – Refentje Matabane (SA), Tshwane University of Technology

Rainwater Reservoir of Shaula and Lesath by Evelyn Agren

On the above collage by Evelyn Agren, the jury wrote:

“The Jury rewards this beautifully executed collage for its atmospheric and ephemeral expression, it´s way of depicting and visualizing a classic architectural process, from delicate hand drawings and models to studies of light and texture, on a very urgent and relevant matter: the scarcity of water.”