Experimental thinking has earned first place in a national competition for a De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) student.
Jure (left) and his winning team
Jure Zibret, who is in his final year of Architecture BA (Hons), was chosen to represent DMU in the prestigious undergraduate Urban Buzz competition run by TRADA, an international organisation dedicated to informing the best use of wood in the built environment.
He was one of 60 students across 28 universities who took part in the two-day challenge hosted at the University of Sheffield, tasked with conceiving creative ways to use timber in a multi-storey car park in Bath.
Working with four other students from universities across the UK, Jure’s team beat 11 others to the £2,000 prize by impressing the judges with a design inspired by views of the River Avon and doubling up as a vertical park.
The 23-year-old from Slovenia said: “This experience is exactly what I hoped I would be exposed to by coming to study in the UK.
“I was very happy to represent DMU’s Leicester School of Architecture and to show the rest of the country what we can do.
“DMU is full of great people doing great things, which deserve recognition, and getting to work with other architects, engineers and landscape architects around the country makes you realise that.”
The challenging competition required students to work as a team, reaching compromises while sketching, modelling and presenting their way through to the finish line.
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“I’m really proud of what I achieved and that people listened to the controversial proposal of a structural detail which was inspired by the Japanese design of perpendicular cantilevers,” said Jure.
“Working with passionate strangers led to a few heated debates, but at DMU we’re taught that only as a team can we provide something better, and that’s been great preparation for competitions and life in industry.
“Architecture allows me to develop a unique model of thinking through how I perceive the world, so the opportunity to be around the like-minded people was really valuable.”
Jure spent two years studying architecture in Slovenia before moving to the UK to study at DMU.
He said: “The course back home was great on the technical front, but not as progressive and contemporary as I was hoping.
“DMU values the creative process and I’m happy with the opportunities I’ve had to help me realise the kind of architecture I want to do currently.
“Being based in the Vijay Patel Building on campus with the rest of the art and design students has a great vibe. Our studio space is very flexible and has the kind of qualities every architecture school should have.”
Posted on Friday 16 March 2018