I represent the generation born in the 80s, raised in the 90s, blossoming in 2020.

I lived in four different decades, two different centuries, two different millennia, and I am not even 40 yet. 

As a child, I played with metal firetrucks in communist Poland, at the age of 10 my parents got me a mobile phone and I needed a backpack for it. As a teenager, I listened to a walkman and played Tamagotchi.

When the first smartphone came out, I decided to keep my Nokia 3310, for the love of the snake. 

Facebook welcomed me to University, as I entered my first year in Architecture. I posted pictures to it every day, creating albums from each weekend gateway.
When Instagram came out, I decided I didn’t like it and refused to start a profile.
With rapid exposure to ever new and better technology, hardware, and software: some of us just haven’t signed for each and every step along the way.
Five years in and Instagram is big today. I still don’t know how to use it properly.
My generation is privileged with an ability to oversee change and advancement as something temporary. Looking back at my life, one can think I have seen much change already, but now: our world changes even faster. It grows and stretches in all directions: research, technology, economy, design and first and foremost: information that follows each and every process along the way.

As the world advances so do our needs.
Things can not and will not stay the same, no matter the intention.
You may want to hide from the progress, but you will never be able to stop it, nor even slow it down.

In my 20s I moved to Guatemala and started a charity called Tribe LAB. My mission was to preserve indigenous ways of building, as a reaction to gentrification and fast-developing building technology. I resisted change for six years, building local architecture projects with the use of vernacular technologies. It was a beautiful way to express my anarchy. I still stand for ecological, holistic design+build practice in architecture and support each and every project which integrates such principles into its delivery.

But rebellion is not always the way. Today I feel that growth can only happen through adaptation.
I am a firm believer in the traditional. I live to preserve vernacular technology and building culture. But, I am also opening to change. 

That change inevitably comes from digitalization.

Digital technology has proven to stretch our capacity as humans: design extraordinary projects, explore space, stay connected. With the power of digitalization today, we are able to do endless good for the planet, for our ecosystem as well as for one another. I believe there is remarkable potential in adaptation and today I am on the mission of exploring adaptation to a digital reality within the very traditional sector of architecture. 

Question is: are we able to innovate, today, or will the change come at us from the millennial generation which is now entering their early 20s. The generation behind us is technologically savvier, so like it or not they will bring digitalization into all aspects of architecture, as you know it. 

There will be new solutions to software and hardware, new ways of communication, new ways of building, new businesses emergent in the sector of architecture, and education will become digital. 

So, will you innovate or wait to be sold innovation to?