On the last night of my latest visit to Barcelona to see the newest arrivals in HP's family of latex printers, I had the chance of visiting Vallery Gallery where they were showing the winning entries of a fascinating architecture competition. This attracted entries from all over the world, and appealed particularly to students. The overall victor was 24 year-old Robbie Crabtree who'd been flown over specially from America for this, which was also his first visit to Europe.

3 Concepts = 1 e-Idea was an architecture contest powered by HP with collaboration from Autodesk and was organised via social media channels. There's more information about this on the HP for Designers Facebook page. The projects were judged by a jury of architects – EMBT, Span, Rojkind Arch, Patterns and Agent.

Robbie Crabtree, winner of 3 Concepts = 1 e-Idea 

What was interesting was that earlier in the day I'd been talking about the AEC side of wide-format print and the appeal for architects, graphic designers and interior designers about how the latest latex printers can find a valuable place alongside HP's technical printers. The fact that original designs and concepts can be moved on from drawings and plans to complete schemes should surely bring the Designjet L26500 and L28500 into this sector rather neatly. Their improved fabric handling makes them great solutions for producing all sorts of wall coverings, so here's another area where wide-format is surely going to find new users.

Talking to architects about wide-format graphics puts a different slant and impetus onto a market which we all know pretty well by now. These specialists like the fact that they can take their concepts a stage further when it comes to interiors, and what they're going to look like in the longer term. Being able to generate ideas for wall coverings, curtains and other elements of décor also adds levels of practical creativity to concepts.

So where we might have thought that this talented breed of specialists is poles apart from conventional users of production printers, the opposite is true. And it's helped by the fact that the technology isn't complicated to use, and nor is it expensive to experiment with different materials.