Filip Zafirovski, North Macedonia, 2026
Nominator: Blagoja Bajkovski
Nominator's statement
Filip Zafirovski is a fourth-year architecture student at the Faculty of Architecture whose work demonstrates a rare intellectual maturity and methodological clarity for his generation. His architectural thinking is research-driven and articulated through an intentional distancing from purely digital production. Instead, Zafirovski cultivates a rigorous practice of hand drawing as a critical design tool, establishing a direct cognitive and bodily relationship between thought, hand, and representation.
His drawings are not illustrative outcomes but operative instruments through which architectural ideas are tested, refined, and spatially constructed. This analog approach enables a heightened sensitivity to scale, proportion, and spatial continuity, positioning drawing as both a medium of inquiry and a form of architectural knowledge. Through this practice, Zafirovski contributes a contemporary yet intellectually grounded position that reaffirms drawing as a fundamental architectural act, making him a highly deserving nominee for the BIG SEE Perspectives Award.
FUTURE IN LAYERS
Type: Museum
Semester: 6th
Studio/Course: Architectural studio 6.2 - Museum of modern architecture
Institution: Faculty of Architecture, University Ss. Cyril and Methodious in Skopje
Mentors: prof. Aneta Hristova- Popovska and prof. Meri Batakoja / prof. Bojan Karanakov
Medium: Pencil and pen on regular and tracing paper
Year: 2025/26
Keywords: Fragments, Frames, Futures
Future in layers proposes a speculative typology that conceptualizes the construction site as both method and metaphor. The project evokes a condition of being perpetually situated within the industrial process—neither pre-industrial nor post-industrial, but in a state of ongoing production, transformation, and habitation. Informed by Francesco Leto’s methodological framework, the project interrogates the construction site as a persistent condition of urbanity—a spatial field defined by the dense choreography of labor, material flows, and infrastructural assembly.The central drawing does not represent a fixed moment; rather, it develops in parallel with the project itself, subject to continual layering, erasure, and redrawing. In this way, the drawing functions not as a static illustration but as a generative device—an architectural site in its own right embodying the temporal and procedural nature of construction. It becomes a medium through which the ongoing negotiation between structure, time, and human agency is spatially enacted. The drawings furthermore reflect the ideas embedded in the project’s title, translating its conceptual intentions directly into spatial and visual form. They reframe the work through perspectives that would seem unconventional in typical renderings or sketches, allowing the project to be understood through shifting conceptual lenses. As the idea matures, the drawings become increasingly precise and realistic, following its development through greater specificity. With each change of medium over time, the work grows more complex and intimate, requiring a progressively deeper engagement with its evolving logic and atmosphere.
PLAY ON FORBIDDEN TYPOLOGIES
Type: Pavilion
Semester: 7th
Studio / Course: Architectural Composition
Institution: Faculty of Architecture, University Ss. Cyril and Methodious in Skopje
Mentors: Ass. Blagoja Bajkovski
Medium: Pen on paper
Year: 2025
Keywords: Typology, Autonomy
The pavilion emerged from a broader design exercise that sought to answer thirty architectural questions through axonometric and floor plan sketches across different scales. The approach to this task was both referential and non-referential. It deliberately borrows and reclaims ideas from existing architectural forms, yet not as diluted references or quotations. Instead, these ideas are treated as direct responses to the same fundamental conditions that shaped their original conception. They are not imitations, but renewed answers to persistent architectural questions. Each question is approached directly through drawing, allowing the subconscious and the already internalized to guide the formation of the response. The act of hand drawing becomes central to the process, generating an inherent logic where the mind is led by the hand. Through this immediacy, the drawings produce forms that feel both inevitable and intuitive, shaped by instinct as much as by intention.
Within this framework, the pavilion does not attempt to be a pavilion. It resists the typical ambition of such structures to communicate overtly with the world, either through excessive pragmatism and user-oriented clarity or as the architect’s autonomous object of pure expression. Instead, the project emerges from a deliberate will and a forbidden fascination with forgotten typologies, particularly the floor plans of medieval churches and mosques, whose spatial power persists even when detached from their original meaning. The design explores the force of decontextualized form and the autonomy of architecture beyond reference. It confronts how processes of revitalization often dissolve the connection between building, use and religion, gradually weakening their original significance. By freezing this moment of separation, the project seeks to reveal the pure atmosphere and spatial intensity of these typologies.The pavilion becomes an autonomous condition, neither a pragmatic structure nor a symbolic object, but a space where form, memory and atmosphere exist independently, allowing the essential presence of architecture to be experienced without explanation or function.
SCALING ATMOSPHERE
Type: Urban design
Semester: 4th
Studio / Course: internship
Institution: k87a__
Mentors: Ass. Maksim Naumovski
Medium: Pen on tracing paper
Year: 2024
Keywords: Scale, Layers
The project began as an attempt to formalize and transform an urban plan designed at a scale where only plots are visible into the human scale of architecture and nature. Developed as an independent contribution to the settlement plan by the office K87a from Skopje for a residential development in Sopište, the work translates abstract territorial organization into lived spatial experience, negotiating between landscape, habitation and architectural form. Rather than treating the plan as a fixed framework, the process sought to reinterpret it through the perception of a resident or guest, bringing the environment closer to the scale of atmosphere, use and everyday presence.
The drawings emerged as an in situ process of improvisation and experimentation, exploring how buildings might be articulated, dressed and experienced through their facades and surrounding spaces. They were constructed through a method of transparent layering, where elements such as architectural form, facade openings, trees and greenery, and landscape interventions were developed on separate layers and later rearranged or combined. Through the shifting and superimposition of these layers, different spatial conditions and atmospheres were tested, allowing each scene to gradually reveal its most coherent configuration. In this way, drawing becomes both method and site of design. The project develops through the accumulation and transformation of layered ideas, where each intervention refines the relationship between architecture, nature and perception. The resulting work reflects a continuous search for spatial clarity and atmosphere, shaped through an evolving dialogue between plan, environment and human experience.
Filip Zafirovski
I am Filip Zafirovski, a fourth year architecture student at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje where I am enrolled in the integrated five-year program at the Faculty of Architecture Skopje. My academic and creative development has been shaped by a continuous engagement with architectural research, design practice and artistic exploration.
From early education through my current studies, I have maintained a strong interest in both the artistic and scientific aspects of architecture, approaching the discipline as a field that demands curiosity, precision and constant questioning.\[2RE – Research & Exhibitions]Throughout my recent work, I have been actively involved in architectural projects, research initiatives and exhibitions that have significantly influenced my perspective and practice. I participated as a collaborator in the project Strada Brutalisima (curated by Ass. prof. Blagoja Bajkovski) for the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, an experience that deepened my understanding of architectural discourse, representation and critical engagement with the built environment. I also contributed to the architectural exhibition FAB LAB: Naturally Lit Factories (curated by prof. Goran Mickovski) as well as to the research and documentation project Garage Stories (curated by prof. Jovan Ivanovski), both of which allowed me to explore architecture through investigation, documentation and curatorial work. \[3PP – Practice & Participation]Alongside my academic work, I collaborate with the architectural studio K87a as a model maker and graphic associate. This professional engagement has allowed me to experience architecture beyond theoretical frameworks, confronting the realities of material, scale and representation in the design process. At the same time, I remain involved in student organizations and community initiatives, seeing participation and collaboration as essential components of both personal development and architectural practice. My interests continue to evolve toward fields such as cultural heritage preservation, residential and public architecture and construction technologies, through which I seek to establish a strong foundation for future professional growth.\[4PAM – Process, Atmosphere & Meaning]My work is grounded in the idea of continuous development. I understand architecture not as a fixed outcome but as an evolving process in which ideas are constantly tested, questioned, and refined over time. The objective is not simply to produce a final form, but to gradually clarify and strengthen an idea through transformation. This development often occurs through recontextualization — revisiting concepts from new perspectives shaped by experience — or by exploring them through different mediums such as hand drawing, digital collage, and direct engagement with material. Through repetition and reinterpretation, ideas gain depth, coherence, and internal logic. Drawing plays a central role in this process. My work operates in two parallel directions: the physical and the atmospheric. On one hand, I focus on the rawness of construction — material presence, structural clarity, and the intensity of architecture in the moment of becoming. These drawings seek to capture labor, texture, and the transformation of abstract thought into built reality. On the other hand, I explore the ephemeral dimension of architecture, particularly scenes of occupation and lived experience. These works exist between reality and imagination, functioning not as idealized renderings but as atmospheric interpretations shaped by prolonged engagement with space. Through drawing, a sense of intimacy develops, and representation becomes an expression of a relationship between observer and environment.The visual language of my work is predominantly black and white. This is less a stylistic choice than a methodological decision that allows for clarity and precision. By limiting the means of representation, I reduce complexity and focus on essential qualities such as structure, contrast, texture, and spatial intensity. The absence of color reinforces conceptual concentration and strengthens the expressive power of form. Ultimately, my practice reflects an ongoing search for meaning within architecture — understood as process, experience, and a continuously transforming mode of thinking and engaging with the world.
Contact
zaf.filip@gmail.com
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