MASS Studio is showing that the architectural heritage left in an advanced stage of decay may be resuscitated, even though temporarily, through some inspired improvisations enlivened by a great idea.
Text: MASS Studio
Photo: Silviu Aldea, Victor Mech
This article was published in zeppelin magazin number 98
From July 29th to 31st, 2011 the Seventh TransilvaniaFest itinerant festival was held in Blaj. At this festival, apart from traditional events, the organizers have chosen to get involved into a more difficult subject – the advanced decay architectural heritage – by organizing several events at Blaj Cultural Palace. After a number of years of disregard and decay, the event managed to temporarily restore its performance area function.
The main challenge consisted in an extremely low budget and a condition that all materials obtained through sponsorships needed to be fully recycled or reused. The entire project relied on the contrast between the intervention and the already built material: the walking surfaces were erected and detached from the walls to direct and offer safe operational walkways. The perimeter light emphasizes a feeling of separation and distance between the temporary insertion and the traumatic past.
The access area has been meant for exhibiting the design works that participate in the architecture competition. A white elevated landing surrounded by warm light marks the route that connects this area to the outdoor platform. Symmetrically laid out unto the stage axis, two kinetic installations spring up from a similar geometric design to propose different kinetic experiences: a mapped projection randomly illuminates the triangles cut out by the yarns while adding spatiality to a mysterious volume. The other installation is streamlined by the human gesture with no technical means to apply to: the shadows of the geometric design pulsate due to the direct drive of a light pendulum while distorting and multiplying the original image.
The platform area coincides with the former performance area whose frameworks had been destroyed entirely by a fire occurring in early 1990s. Thus, the space appeared like a patio where vegetation gained solid grounds. The central platform has been designed as a white abstract surface, which at the edge out of the stage tower is geometrically folding to form a topographic hill side to support events occurring in parallel with the honorific dinner: a quartet concert and a play. A tower playing the role of a periscope allows a view to the vegetation from the balcony, at the floor level, adding some visible verticality and spatiality to the intervention.
The compound composed of the platform, the geometric stage and the tower makes a complex object which is contrastingly inserted into the auditorium break-up and contaminates the charred floor and the existing masonry with its white light. A new space is thus created where the elegant dinner evolves in an atmosphere of peace and openness to the sky. The mapped projection systematically illuminates certain areas of the stage: the doorway, the vegetation or the background bringing out the same theme of abstract geometry and white light.
