<select>Your winner. Your vote can make a difference!</select>

The last weeks remain until the announcement of the best works of this year's Young Architect Award 2014. You can choose your favorite until September 10, 2014. The work with the most votes will receive the title of Public's Choice Award. The official announcement will take place along with the opening of the exhibition on September 16, 2014 at PVA EXPO PRAHA in Letňany. More at www.yaa.cz.

Last year's winner of the Public's Choice Award (photo gallery): 1+1>2 Synergy of Milešovka, Author: Bc. Karel Loupal, Co-author: Bc. Kateřina Stiehlová, School: FA ČVUT in Prague, Studio: Studio of Jan Jehlík

The work concerns possible approaches to the renewal of the Czech countryside. The area identified is located in the Protected Landscape Area of the Czech Central Mountains, specifically around the summit of Milešovka. This area was chosen by a local resident, an architect, who brought us to this issue. Villages and small towns are often overlooked today, and working with them will be very necessary and important in the near future.
Around Milešovka lie three villages - Milešov, Bílka, and Černčice. They are struggling with gradual depopulation. Many people do not live here; they only have weekend cottages. The area lacks jobs, and people commute to surrounding towns. This phenomenon affects a large number of other villages today.
The goal was to find methods and approaches to elevate the entire area.
This work focuses on a layer that brings more tourists to the places and simultaneously new opportunities for the locals. The foundation is made up of paths that pass through selected points and areas. We further work with these points; either we merely accentuate them or restore them, or we even create new points that complement the area. The paths are not designed solely as connections between points, but the environments they traverse are also important. The basic idea is that people will bring money, which brings jobs, and where there are jobs, life is better and more enjoyable.
The design should be an initiating process that will gather momentum, contributing to the revival of Milešovska.
Paths in the landscape and settlements serve as a nourishing and connecting system, without which we could not function. Therefore, in our work, we focus on finding points, accentuating, restoring, or creating entirely new points, and interconnecting them. These points/areas may exist in the landscape, and they may even function well, but only when they are united into one whole and operate together and in mutual cooperation can they uplift the entire area. This principle is called SYNERGY /1+1 > 2/.
We realize that enhancing tourism, mapping paths, and addressing their points alone will not ensure the salvation of the entire area. However, we see it as an important layer, an entry point that can kick-start further processes like a snowball.