MSA Stage 4 School of Architecture
Marcelina Janas
I’m a fourth-year architecture student at MSA, originally from Warsaw, Poland. I desire to challenge the conventional, creating spaces that demand your attention and urge you to pause, question, and remember. I’m particularly interested in the psychological and sensory dimensions of architecture. Mainly, how light, rhythm, and the modulation of pace within the building can invite reflection and evoke emotion in the visitor.
My process is research-driven and layered. It often begins with a historical, cultural, or site-specific thread and constantly evolves throughout the project. I intend to challenge the limitations of purely visual perception, advocating for a holistic, sensory engagement with the architectural space.
CAN’T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES
Glasgow’s modern art cultural scene feels stagnant.
With the Glasgow Wood Institute, I wanted to disrupt that pattern. This isn’t just another building to drift through; it demands your attention, urging you to pause, question, and remember. I envision the Wood Institute almost as an architectural art installation—a structure that, while simple in its exterior form, transforms movement into narrative and space into experience. The staircases modulate and slow the pace, while bridges invite reflection.
“Structures are experienced as having a protective and calming quality as well as accommodating human bodily orientation. When landscape structures harmonize with mental structures, we enter deeper dimensions of living in a particular landscape or building.” (Lauri Louekari in Architecture of the Forest)
My design aspires to harmonize these physical and psychological dimensions. The spatial qualities of a forest—its layered depth, verticality, and the ‘aggressive’ interplay of light and shadow—serve as generative principles. This orchestration of slow, deliberate circulation and visual permeability is intended to foster active participation, transforming passive observation into a personalized journey.
Materiality is fundamental to this immersion. Expanses of glazing make the structure visually accessible, dissolving the boundary between the building’s interior and its exterior. The selective use of Corten steel cladding introduces an organic, weathering element, reflecting the forest’s process of transformation.
Is the artificial reproduction of a natural process possible? My design does not seek to mimic nature but to distill its essence through its unpredictability, its tactile depth, its interplay between light, shadow, and texture. The proposed Wood Institute challenges the limitations of purely visual perception, advocating for a holistic, sensory engagement with architectural space. It extends an invitation to the visitor—to traverse, to interrogate, and to experience.
URBAN HOUSING
This project began with the decision to keep the existing historical facade on the site. By choosing to preserve it, I took on the challenge of embracing its character and integrating it respectfully into the new proposal. This allowed the latest development to remain rooted in the memory of the existing Tradeston community and acknowledge its historical context. Rather than entirely clearing the site, the preserved facade became a threshold, a clear boundary between the public street and the new private housing behind it.
The housing block behind the facade introduces a system of internal corridors and layered routes, designed to encourage a sense of community through shared circulation and opportunities for interaction. These routes create moments of encounter and pause, evoking the experience of navigating historic city blocks, where narrow passages and informal rhythms naturally foster neighbourly connections. I intentionally avoided sterile housing layouts that discourage belonging and social cohesion.
This design approach seeks to balance public and private space, preserve memory and continuity, and ground the new intervention within a site-specific narrative and spatial logic. It avoids generic solutions in favour of meaningful, context-driven design.
