The 2016 East Centric Arhitext Awards contest is representative for the lively architectural scene in Central and Eastern Europe searching for identity within a global contemporary approach.

The 2016 East Centric Arhitext Awards contest is representative for the lively architectural scene in Central and Eastern Europe searching for identity within a global contemporary approach. The diversity and overall high quality of the projects is remarkable, inspired by the existing situations and responding to the desire of a harmonious environment. The sensual work with materiality in an assumed modern expression has become a shared theme. Architecture as a reflection of an open, equal and tolerant society is a major concern.

The scope/and crop of Arhitext East Centric Awards is once again to identify small islands of architecture imprinted still with cultural, geographical and historical context and narration, in the vast ocean of buildings and landscapes touched by the neo-liberal economic and financial, (correct) political and social instrumentality, on one hand, and the technical/technological one, on the other. Their drift, yet evident, may very well be a very efficient adjustment to counter massive crisis, continuously numerous and diverse. Yet the greatest danger/the challenge to these islands detached from long gone continents of normal humanity, just like the icebergs, is none the less the global warming and its consequences – local geography erosions, dislocations of historical space and time, breaches of tissues and textures of identity, erasing differences, collapse of cultural ecosystem and last, but not least, their melting and disappearance in the primordial vastness of the ocean. Until then, we may as well enjoy the new islands and discovering old ones. AECA is nothing but a chance to do so.