BMA – Boris Micka Associates

Boris Micka is academic architect and specialised in scenography under the mentorship of famous stage designer Josef Svoboda from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In the past 30 years, Boris has become one of the most renowned museum and exhibition designers internationally. He has designed and produced over a hundred cultural projects worldwide, obtaining many distinguished awards. In 2008, Boris Micka founded his creative studio – BMA, incorporating a talented selection of architects, media designers, and production and project managers with the mission to create exciting and innovative projects with contextual significance. BMA is currently established at offices in Sevilla, Istanbul and Dubai, developing a wide range of international projects such as the treasury collection at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, the Atturaif Living Museum in Riyadh, and the new “Invisible Worlds” wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Interview with BMA – Boris Micka Associates

Red Dot: Why did you become a designer?
BMA – Boris Micka Associates: I was the active child, building and taking things apart whilst instinctively documenting my thought process with drawings. I was very hands on and fell in love working with wood when I had the opportunity at 13 years old. Later, I was placed as one of three students nationwide into the academic architect programme at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. That formalised my designer calling.

What does design mean to you?
For me, design is a personal subconscious process, where rich ideas are imbued in our complex world. Most of the time, I am living and absorbing the environment; blending and ingesting experiences, sensibilities which then come together into something at its own time. Design is about seeing in different ways, being excited with new discoveries, it is enjoyable not to have any rules to follow and be the first to set the precedent.

What intention do you pursue with your award-winning work?
My intent is to create an enjoyable experience and a quality environment where my audience are inspired, in their own time, their own terms to feel good about themselves in this world. Their take-away from visiting my works should allow them to enthuse about their experience, and I hope they will all feel distinct moments of joy, excitement, awe, intrigue, and higher awareness before they visit my works.

Was your award-winning work inspired by current social issues?
It is not a design in specific response… but considering our use of the latest technologies in the KSA pavilion, we were mindful of the undeniable presence of the digital and social media in our current life. The mega-screen over the plaza is a symbolic magnification of people’s mobile phone, enlarged and brought into the public realm. The digitisation of the plaza is a transformation of the traditional open square. Another manifestation that may not be obvious, is our deliberate design of the pavilion’s visitors’ experience as a collective experience, where people are free to come and go, to select their own “landing sites”, to decide how long they want to engage with it and “click” their own “follows” or “likes”. This analogy to mass social media activity of how one would behave on their phones subconsciously allows the visitors to feel at ease, in having autonomy yet remaining anonymous.

Please describe the concept of creativity against the background of your award-winning work.
Creativity has no limits, it is free and infinite, like the sky. The concept reinforces my point that good design is fearless, but grounded in the hard core of a universal belief and faith in humanity.