Slovak student wins unconventional design award in Astana

Tomáš Boroš, a student at Technical University in Košice, has achieved notable success at the international design competition Isover Multi Comfort House Students Contest 2015 in Astana, having received a special award from the jury for his design of a residential zone with a so-called passive standard for the Kazakh capital. Astana is the world's second coldest capital, which also faces sizeable temperature variances, with the participants of the competition being tasked to cope with this. The contest featured 51 students from 20 European and Asian countries. The preliminary national rounds featured as many as 1,300 students from more than 90 universities. "I created two spaces with greenery inside and a covered space in the centre. I didn't want to create a house to be settled on a plot - I attempted to create a town instead", said the student of Technical University in Košice's Faculty of Arts, adding that his design was somewhat unconventional. The students had to take into account the extreme climate in Astana, with the temperature range being from -52 to +42 degrees Celsius - a fact that places unusually high demands on the passive standard. At the same time the students also had to consider Astana's futuristic architecture. Astana, as in the cases of Brasilia and Canberra, for example, was created from virtually nothing, by the will of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Its total concept is the work of Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, with many key buildings designed by the studio of Norman Foster from the UK. Boroš said that he was pleased to receive the jury's prize, and even happier to hear the words of its member who presented him the award. "He said, 'I believe that a time will come when we all will be adult enough to start reading fairy tales again.' He captured it perfectly. Child-like innocence and directness are exactly the qualities that I want to grow up into", said Boroš.