Talent does not become visible through talent alone. It also needs recognition: someone willing to notice its potential, speak its name and stand behind its work. For every young architect and designer selected for the BIG SEE Perspectives Awards, that person is a nominator: an established architect, designer, professor or practitioner who believes their work deserves wider attention.
BIG SEE Perspectives turns these individual acts of recognition into a regional platform. The curatorial project identifies and supports emerging creative talent from Southeast Europe and beyond, offering young professionals visibility, professional validation and an opportunity to become part of a wider creative conversation.
The nomination is what gives the award its particular meaning. It is personal, deliberate and accountable. By placing their own name beside someone else’s work, nominators do more than recommend a promising individual: they help open the professional space in which that talent can grow.
The 2026 edition brought together emerging architects and product designers from 19 countries from Southeast Europe, revealing a generation whose work is already shaping new relationships between design, architecture, materials, communities and place. From this wider group, we present ten BIG SEE Perspectives whose practices offer a glimpse of the region’s creative future.
Selected from the fields of architecture and product design, these ten BIG SEE Perspectives reveal a new generation of creative voices emerging across the region. Each brings a distinct approach to materials, space, production and contemporary life, supported by a nominator who recognised the potential of their work.
Architecture, Austria
Nominated by: Thomas Amann, architect, educator and researcher at TU Vienna.
Vienna-based studio dreiSt works across material research, circular construction and spatial design. Its projects begin with local resources, waste streams and hands-on experimentation. In the Biofabrique Kantine, urban and agricultural by-products become a demountable building system, showing how architecture can grow through collaboration with materials, place and existing resources.
Product Design, Serbia
Nominated by: Tamara Panić, product designer and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade.
Marija Kucurski approaches product design through empathy, production logic and a clear understanding of contemporary use. Her work spans consumer products and industrial systems, with repairability and sustainability embedded in the design process. The WT (1) walkie-talkie translates a transparent visual language into a manufacturable, rechargeable and accessible product designed for easy disassembly and continued use.
Architecture, Czech Republic
Nominated by: Tomáš Zdvihal, architect and co-founder of CBArchitektura.
David Budil treats sustainability as a spatial and systemic question. His award-winning diploma project, Circular Centre Plzeň, proposes a new urban typology combining production, housing and public life within a framework of material reuse. The project shows how circular principles can organise an entire piece of city, connecting environmental responsibility with everyday urban life.
Product Design, Croatia
Nominated by: Danijela Domljan, product designer and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, University of Zagreb.
Katarina Trpčić explores how objects carry memory, belonging and regional identity. Her graduation project, Naše, reimagines traditional tableware through questions of home, inheritance and the relationship between tradition and contemporary life. Across her practice, direct work with natural materials and craft becomes a way of developing products with emotional depth and a strong sense of place.
Architecture, Slovakia
Nominated by: Zuzana Pastirčák Duchová, editor of KONCEPT magazine.
Atelier Garad approaches architecture through transformation, material honesty and careful attention to context. Its conversion of a former industrial complex into the headquarters of Magna Energia preserves the original workshop and urban structure while adding recycled brick and CLT elements. Across housing, interiors and adaptive reuse, the studio connects inherited fabric with contemporary patterns of work and living.
Product Design, Hungary
Nominated by: Péter Molnár, designer, academic and co-founder of Maform.
Nóra Szilágyi combines refined simplicity with systemic thinking and close attention to industrial heritage. Reflecta revisits familiar Eastern European lamp typologies through the surviving tools and knowledge of a former Hungarian lamp factory. Spun-aluminium components, standard fittings and adjustable light modes connect small-series production with long-term use, showing how existing manufacturing cultures can support contemporary design.
Architecture, Slovenia
Nominated by: Tadej Glažar, architect and Full Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana.
Ana Jerman’s work already demonstrates an ability to carry ambitious public projects from competition to completion. Before finishing her studies, she led the team that won the competition for a kindergarten in Bohinjska Bistrica; the completed building later received the Plečnik Medal. A subsequent competition win for housing in Maribor extends this socially engaged practice into new forms of collective living.
Product Design, Romania
Nominated by: Iosif Mihailo, professor and Head of the Design and Applied Arts Department at the West University of Timișoara.
David Borovic-Ivanov explores mobility through parametric design, additive manufacturing and close attention to the body. SYNTHESIS combines human power and electric assistance in a dual-drive urban bicycle, while his hydro-bike concept translates cycling into a flexible on-water experience. Across both projects, technology, ergonomics and material efficiency support new forms of sustainable movement.
Architecture, Albania
Nominated by: Gjergji Islami, architect and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Polytechnic University of Tirana.
Founded by Andi Arifaj and Adonel Myzyri, aa.arkitektur combines practice with research, teaching and critical inquiry. Their work moves between built proposals and wider cultural questions, including participation in the Albanian curatorial team at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. In Capella Pacis, a narrow cemetery chapel unfolds through enclosure, light and horizon, turning a boundary into a place of pause.
Product Design, Italy
Nominated by: Domenico Sturabotti, architect and Director of the Symbola Foundation.
Alberto Piovesan brings product design into environments where safety, performance and the human body must operate as one system. His projects range from the 75°06’S Antarctic Suit, developed for work at –80°C, to an ESA space suit combining a high-tech textile layer with a supporting exoskeleton. Across them, design becomes a tool for protection, visibility and physical capability under extreme conditions.
The ten Perspectives presented here offer only one view into a much broader generation of emerging architects and designers across Southeast Europe. Their work reflects different contexts, disciplines and ambitions, yet each has been recognised through the same meaningful gesture: an established professional choosing to place their name beside someone whose potential deserves to be seen. Through these connections, BIG SEE Perspectives builds visibility, confidence and continuity across generations, helping new creative voices enter the wider professional conversation.
Discover all awarded BIG SEE Perspectives and the nominators who chose to stand behind their work here.
Powered by
Edited by:
Tanja Završki
Photography:
Jakob Cehner