Articles published by: Nickname

We are living in post-Communism in Romania, that is, in a country still defining itself by its relationship to its Communist past. After a long tradition of invented mythologies and counterfeit identities, we are searching for real history. In order for it to exist, we need witnesses and memories to acknowledge, even when shameful. And this is where the museum steps in, with its possible role of mediator, of negotiator in this process of understanding and learning, and, perhaps, ultimately, of healing memories that hurt.

An almost collapsed house. Volonteers. Real restauration instead of the easier reconstruction. The fragile house becomes a means for a bottom-up cultural program and a hope for the local community

text authors: Mirela Duculescu, Andreea Machidon, Raluca Munteanu, Raluca Știrbăț, Șerban Sturdza
photo: Camil Iamandescu, Raluca Munteanu, Șerban Sturdza, Pro Patrimonio

*George Enescu House, about 1920. Dr. Ștefan Botez archive

Intro

Mirela Duculescu, the chronicler

 Architecture serves society. Heritage buildings that were rescued and naturally integrated in the economy of contemporary life, youth education, recovered crafts and consolidated communities, these are the fundamental directions for the Pro Patrimonio Foundation. The Foundation seeks, devises rescue and restoration models, finds and offers solutions for heritage as an economic, cultural and environmental resource.

An illustrative case study is provided. In 2013, an exceptional pianist meets an architect that doesn’t fit any established pattern, , and signals the disastrous state in which she had found George Enescu’s house, in the Mihăileni village, Botoșani County, on the border with Ukraine, in a high risk area (depopulation, poverty, failing community cohesion).

*existing situation, april 2014 ©Raluca Munteanu.

The architect listens to his instinct, strategy and lifetime expertise. The peasant household, in a shocking state of decay, with definite architectural qualities (intricate planimetry, based on the golden ratio), is deemed fit for demolition by brethren and authorities.

*Existing situation, Aprilie 2014 ©Raluca Munteanu.

Nevertheless, it is a classified historical monument, since November 2013, Code LMI BT-IV-m-B-21063, due to the pianist’s stubbornness. There ensues a declaration of emergency situation for the building, the step by step conservation and restoration, synchronous with the complicated stage of searching for valid models of integrating the house in everyday life, alongside the community, beyond architecture.

7 years later, on August 19, 2020, the restoration site for George Enescu’s house in Mihăileni closes, and the composer’s memory is honoured by a concert given by the pianist. In fact, one stage closes, the one of restoring distressed rural heritage, and another one opens, that of using-living the space through education and musical culture for the community, a future core that may  become a centre of excellence in the study of sound.

The entire endeavour was an enormous joint effort, coordinated by Pro Patrimonio, aided exclusively by private entities, an entire army of natural and legal persons, who supported, financially or in kind, the entire restoration process.

2020 was the celebration of 20 years since the Pro Patrimonio Foundation was set up in Romania by architect Șerban Cantacuzino.

We have the house, we have the land, we have to have the community as well!

Șerban Sturdza, the architect of strategic exploration

I was sitting comfortably with several friends in Radu Miclescu’s mansion in Călinești, when I happened to learn of the Enescu house in Mihăileni. I hadn’t been aware of Raluca Știrbăț’s efforts of rediscovering the history of the place, of her and her mother’s travels in the surrounding villages, and, ultimately, of the bumpy endeavours she had already undertaken. My friend, architect Alexandru Beldiman, had already seen the ruined house and had told us it was almost impossible to save. That is when I realised the possible core of this story, a small architecture object which, should one be able to save it, would become a very good example for so many forgotten places in Romanian culture. The project’s quintessence was well shaped before me. Saving this small building was scheduled without having seen it. It engulfed the essential Romanian issues (see Brâncuși’s house, etc.). Why should there be a restored Radu Miclescu Mansion, and not a restored George Enescu House, just 35 km away, when Eminescu’s Ipotești was just 15 km away from where I sat?

The rescue model lies beyond architecture, in the social needs of the place and in a conversation with Mr. Ovidiu Ionică, a local and entrepreneur builder. He told me that, if we were to repair the house, “we could also send our children here to take music lessons.” Right then, or perhaps a little bit afterwards, I realised something which in time became reality: the house and its architecture were a pretext, what mattered was how to set it up and running again, with whom and how could one build a site for education. Nothing mortified, nothing museified, everything used, and not just randomly, but at the highest level.

After a careful analysis of the physical aspects, leaning over the building’s surveys, amazed at the proportions and relationships between spaces, I re-discovered a few regulating trails and geometric relationships contained in the architecture plan, and I perceived the object differently. I am now stating that we are not looking at a regular peasant house, but at an architecture plan that took a long time and a great deal of intelligence to elaborate, a house that was inhabited by an accomplished, well-educated family. Suddenly, the existence of a piano in this house became mentally acceptable – in fact, it was a returning of the instrument where it had always belonged – and a plan of intervention started to take shape.

Instead of a construction firm specialising in restorations and of the usual experts with their stamps and CVs, I preferred an analysis of local limitations, and then to work with  common local technology, and people who knew how to make and re-make, every now and then, with simple means, the mandatory parameters of living. Amazement struck when, seeing the house ruins, the locals recognized the common things which were so unknown to us: the iatac (bedchamber), the stove-wall, the custom of sleeping on the oven, the workings of the cellar with its ventilation system. The only chance to achieve the project with a high degree of authenticity was the claca[1] – a joint effort, shared by the neighbours, and rewarded with wine and brass band music.

I have continuously balanced the project and its achievement between two extremes. On the one hand, physical work, using the original substance (clay, straws, manure), the brutality of the technology, dictated by throwing the clay at the walls from a distance and binding it by force, but also the gentleness of the last clacă, the “good hand” of local women. On the other hand, inviting Tudor Patapievici, a student architect at that time, to do his BA thesis, under the coordination of Professor Dan Marin, on the plot across the road from the Enescu House, with a necessary theme: a centre for musical education and music research, a project which, when finished, had us delighted with the result, and convinced all those involved that, for sure, this project would have continued to execution stage, had things taken place in Switzerland. There was a chance for creating a landmark in the Bucovina area…

We have the house, we have the land, we have to have the community as well. The topic remains music and sound research in general. We are looking for collaborators and investors to raise awareness to a project with a huge potential, which few people acknowledge now: a centre for excellence in music and the study of sound. The size of the building and the fact that it is far away, somewhere in the north, a few hundred meters off the Ukraine border, does not diminish its power and, let us not forget, George Enescu is increasingly discovered by the international world. Watch out.

The profession is constantly adapting, before the eyes of the community. Conservation principles

Raluca Munteanu, the architect who won’t give up

The George Enescu House in Mihăileni, Botoșani County, is a simple, provincial house, symmetrically organized, with the planimetric organization and elevation defined by the golden ratio: two 4x4m living rooms, each communicating with two 2x2m iatace (bedchambers). Each communication is done via a stove-wall, a rare and novel architecture element. The main facade has a glazed-in porch, which leads to a central hallway, accesing the two large rooms, located on both sides of the hall. The access hatch to the (half, stone-built) cellar is also found in this hallway, as is the access ladder to the attic. At the far end of the hallway, one reaches the two rooms under the polata (eaves), one functioning as a kitchen, with a cooking stove, the other meant to be a larder. On the outside, the house is surrounded on three sides by a narrow veranda.

In 2014, the house was in a state of near collapse. Rain and snow coming through the roof, which had degraded year after year, had affected the half-timber walls and the wooden structure. The house had been abandoned for years, unkept, its cultural value forgotten. The first natural step was an emergency intervention to remove the danger of total collapse, which seemed imminent with the arrival of autumn rain and snow. The energies of many young architects and students, coordinated by the Order of Architects, the Bucharest and North-East Branches, were accompanied by a local team and, during several weeks, managed to provide some support to the house, to protect it from water and to clean up the interior, taking inventory of the objects found and of the house’s schematics.

*Emergency intervention, Aprilie-May 2014 ©Pro Patrimonio.

In parallel to the efforts of shedding some light on its legal status and of raising funds for restoration, as architects, we tackled the issue of how to rehabilitate the house. An oak-structure building, on a not-so-deep dry stone foundation, with walls filled in with clay and straw, is one that hardly falls under the usual intervention practice. The crafters suggested demolishing and rebuilding it by the same techniques they still mastered. The suggestion did not seem wrong, given that most of the structure seemed compromised, and that the craftsmen’s knowledge in reproducing the execution technique seemed satisfying. Nevertheless, in the current context when reconstructions are accepted too frequently and too easily (even in the absence of traditional materials or without reproducing the execution techniques), the Pro Patrimonio team, led by Architect Șerban Sturdza, reached the conclusion that it was more important for the work to become an example for the principle of preserving the historical substance, than it was to get a new, improved copy. Besides, the approach also had an important psychological impact on the community: the building did not vanish from the site, and all the repair steps could be observed, so that both the locals, and the wide public, could see that a ruin could be reborn.

*Conserved wooden structure, 2015 ©Raluca Munteanu.

How was the work done? The unstable stones in the cellar walls were taken out and built in with lime mortar, the roof structure was propped up with adjustable cast-moulding metal rods, and the cracked and damaged filling was taken out of the walls. The walls, cleaned of impurities (whitewash and rubble debris) were completed with clay, sand and manure, and was reused to fill in the walls. Before filling up the walls again, the wooden structure was checked and completed with the missing wooden pieces, or the damaged elements were replaced. The clay filling and finishing was done during three traditional clăci (2015-2016), where the local community, volunteers from neighbouring villages and project supporters from all over the country came together and worked all day long accompanied by the sound of a brass band of Hilișeu-Horia, and shared a meal prepared by the locals.

*Remaking the clay filling of the walls, first „claca” ©Raluca Munteanu.

The entire outer woodwork was also repaired by local master carpenters, preserving even the 2mm small hand-made glass panes found on-site. The missing panes were replaced by glass of the same quality from other houses in the village, where the locals did not want to keep them, or from ruined houses.

*Remaking the stoves ©Pro Patrimonio

Another difficult decision was to introduce sanitary facilities in the house, as present need of comfort and hygiene demand it. But a house built on a half-timber structure is sensitive to water. Where initially the agreed solution was to have an independent annex to house sanitary facilities, up to the end the larder was transformed into a bathroom.

*left – The bathroom / right – The kitchen ©Camil Iamandescu

To limit the risks of contact between the water installation and the clay walls, sanitary objects were grouped together at the centre of the room, on an independent parapet, made of modern materials (metal structure and asbestos cement), to ensure easy maintenance and optimal use. The room preserves unaltered its whitewashed clay walls.

From the experience of this restoration, we could find some lessons for architects: no matter how badly damaged a building is, the architect must analyse, first and foremost, how they can preserve as much of the historical substance as possible, before deciding to create a copy. Authenticity and original materials increase the value of the place and have an impact on the community, an impact we often undervalue. Another important aspect was collaborating with locals at the level of ideas, as both the restoration solutions, and the manner of using the house after repairs were born out of these discussions, which were not thought out from behind the drawing board.

… Enescu places the moment of the golden “ratio” (Goldener Schnitt) with mathematical precision….

Raluca Știrbăț, the pianist

The Enescu house in Mihăileni came into my life unexpectedly, as a natural consequence of my wanderings on Moldovan lands, searching for Enescu-related musical and biographical paths. I was in no way prepared for many of the things that were to follow, but I shall not speak here of the chagrin caused by the indifference – opposition even, hard to understand when it came down to a discreet, but valuable Enescu monument, the only one preserving the authentic architectural and emotional substance of an old house built and inhabited continuously by the composer’s family.

The true surprises were related, on the one hand, to discovering some intimate aspects in the life of the composer and that of his family – complex aspects, worthy of a volume of their own – as well as to Architect Șerban Sturdza’s findings regarding the regulating paths and the presence of the golden ratio in an apparently simple, yet discreetly elegant architecture.

*Golden rectangle  in the organization of the plan ©Șerban Sturdza

As a musician with an older passion for mathematics, the aesthetics of proportions or the mysticism of Matila Ghyka’s golden number (by the way, Matila Ghyka was born in Iași in the same year as Enescu), I am looking in my music sheets for the more or less visible structures, guidance in the intricacy of complicated sound languages, especially that of Enescu. Just like his idols – the “three great Bs”: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms – Enescu places the golden “ratio” moment (Goldener Schnitt) with mathematical precision and genius spontaneity in the return of the main theme at the beginning of reprises or in the most sensitive moments of the composition.

Just as surprising, claca, the “good clay” or the “good hand”, where women – with their slender and nimble hands – are caressing the soft and moist texture which is to become the wall of the house, was, to me, a unique sensory experience, besides the emotional involvement and the actual “lending a hand” to rebuilding Enescu’s house.

*Last touches to the clay walls, the so-called „good hand” made by women, „claca” ©Raluca Munteanu.

At the time, I was amazed by the substance similarities in barehandedly moulding a clay house and the kneading of bread dough or a new music piece one discovers, remodels and rebuilds, immersed in the piano keys and penetrating the composer’s deepest intimate universe.

I also want to share the moment when the piano came, when I felt – perhaps, with an excusable subjectivity – that, 7-8 years of efforts later, the house had finally regained its “soul”, with the Bösendorfer becoming a sort of axis mundi in a mini-universe of Mihăileni. And yet, perhaps it was not that ‘mini’, if we were to remember the auditory-sensory revelation of a 3 year-old Jorjac (”Georgie”) Enescu, dissatisfied with the four strings of his toy violin, which he could not use to compose, and the experience which would ultimately mark his destiny as a composer:

“Over the summer, going to my mother’s house in Mihăileni and seeing the piano there, on which my mother used to play, I immediately asked that we take the piano with us […]. It was now so good to let myself wander among chords! A glass of water to a thirsty man could not provide more joy!”

Conquering the land through education

Andreea Machidron, the enthusiastic architect (“our Miss”, as the children in the village of Mihăileni would put it)

We created the Education for Heritage Caravan in 2015, as a strategic instrument addressing mainly children and young people in the sometimes poor and de-structured areas where Pro Patrimonio is carrying out projects. The workshops are aimed at education and direct learning, through experiment and creativity, about architectural heritage, memory, local identity, relationships between people, nature, buildings, and cultural values.

*Education in heritage, atelier with the children form Mihăileni, 2020 ©Andreea Machidon

The caravan reached Bucovina, in Mihăileni for the first time in August 2020, where 20 children attended an intensive program dedicated to heritage, to discovering the Enescu house and to creatively exploring local resources. One of the most beloved activities was the one aimed at sound education. The vibrations of various surrounding materials were used as starting points in an attempt to map the sounds of the place, of comparing them to voices and instruments and to ingeniously use them to build hand-made instruments, eventually tuned in an impromptu orchestra. And as historians, the children researched and found the history of the house and of George Enescu’s memories of it, creating an animation dedicated to the place.

Info & credits

Place: sat Mihăileni, jud. Botoșani/Mihăileni village, Botoșani county
Construction: 1775-1830
Emergency intervention, conservation, restauration: 2013-2020
Historical monument code: LMI BT-IV-m-B-21063
Program: MUasic and Sound Study Academy, memorial building
Owner: Pro Patrimonio Foundation
Architecture :
Project responsable : Șerban Sturdza
Team: Raluca Munteanu, Tudor Patapievici
Architects, volonteers for the survey: Lucian Rădulescu, Natașa Andrei, Mădălina Bălulescu, Alice-Maria Dimofte, Elena Rucsandra Maior, Alexandru Miron, Andra Eliza Poenaru, Diana Stancu, Alexandru Tone, Vlad-Alexandru Voicu, Ionuț Dohotariu, Răzvan Stanciu.
Craftsmen for emergency interventions and clay walls restauration : the team led by Ovidiu Ionică
Finishes, installations, interior refurbishment: team lead by Gabriel Drancă, DMG House & Building SRL
Plot area (sqm): 1267
Built area (sqm): 134
Partners:
International  ”George Enescu” Foundation, Vienna, Remember Enescu Foundation, UiPath Foundation, The Prince of Wales’s Foundation Romania, Popovici Nițu Stoica & Asociații Attorneys at law, Radu Miclescu Foundation, Chamber of Romanian Architecs – Bucharest and North-East Branches, Color Magic Sikkens Romania, Geberit Romania
Private funds :
Emergency intervention : 10.000 Euro
Restauration:  85.000 Euro

[1] A Romanian and Hungarian costum – an short and intense period of construction, for which all members of a community collaborate. The construction can be public or private (when, in time, everyone’s turn comes).

ADN BA have had the opportunity to insert small buildings in sensitive urban areas before, but that has usually happened in the garden districts in the north side of Bucharest. In this case, the context has an older history, being part of the extended historical centre, more eclectic (a mixture of buildings of all styles and sizes), but also rich in landmarks and symbolic spaces of the city.

In what follows we will talk about a example of reconditioning and re-use of an existing dwelling space. The importance of such a project cannot be stressed enough, no matter how much is written about the subject. We live in a highly built world which constantly presents us with the opportunity to reinvest buildings with the facilities necessary to contemporary generations, thus salvaging energy, resources, and a dash of memory.

On 27 July, during the 44th extended session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the Rosia Montana mining landscape was inscribed simultaneously on the World Heritage List and on the List of World Heritage in Danger. On this occasion, Sneška Quaedvlieg – Mihailovic, Secretary General of Europa Nostra, delivered a powerful statement, strongly applauding this decision and recalling the support of Europa Nostra to this campaign, also with the support of the European Investment Bank Institute, during the past decade. Europa Nostra is also preparing a congratulatory letter addressed to the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who himself welcomed the inclusion of the mining landscape in these important lists.

Intro: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

This short dossier starts in fact before the introduction you are just reading. The opinion piece on rural space and the recent works of the Larix Studio closes the dossier on village architecture; it also includes a public space project, one of the most persecuted programs in a rural world that has to deal with underfunding, migration and abandonment, but also with individual interests and poor civic association.

Coordinators: Cătălina Frâncu, Ștefan Ghenciulescu

“The Countryside”. Introduction

The first lockdowns helped bloom the #cottagecore aesthetic. It is a trend born out of a wish for a simpler life, with low levels of stress, which would allow an easy connection to nature through activities like husbandry, gardening, picnics, etc. It’s also about nostalgia for good times passed, an imagery and aesthetic which stirs the spirits of a lot of people, from the radical left and minorities, to the ultra-traditional right

Editorial: 37 meters and 20 centimeters

Text: Mugur Grosu
Photo: Alexandru Oglindă

Six Frenchmen get off the plane and start following a bunch of football fans, thinking they will lead them to the stadium. They reach a pub in the old town where the others start drinking. A couple of beers later they realize that the supporters were not Hungarians but Ukrainians, and what they thought was Budapest was in fact another capital that had once dreamed itself to be Little Paris (…)

DOSIER: Rural

Intro:
The Countryside. Introduction

Coordinators: Cătălina Frâncu, Ştefan Ghenciulescu

The Piscu School Museum and Atelier Piscu experience

Text: Ştefan Ghenciulescu, Cosmin Pavel, Mihnea Simiraş
Photo: Laurian Ghiniţoiu & echipa proiectului

A place of discreet worth. A generous dream. A student project. And then a real one. The mu¬seum in Piscu village is the result of an individ¬ual initiative and of a good mix between work, teaching, heritage and a modern vision

Viila Cheia, Cluj County

Text: Paul Mihai Moldovan, Anamaria Moldovan
Photo: Ovidiu Micşa

The guest house acts simultaneously as steady object and element of the landscape, as mod¬ern construction and reinterpretation of archaic gestures and places.

The Wood House
Manopera Architecture: Housing, Ciurila, Cluj

Text: Raluca Sabău, Romeo Cuc
Photo: Eliza Jurca

The wood house project is proof of a vision claiming that new inter¬ventions in the rural environment can be contemporary and gen¬tle, too, and that they need to work with of today’s life, in the same way as old households used to an¬swer to the naturalness of life in their own time.

2/4 Concrete Houses
Manopera Architecture: Semi‑detached Houses, Târgu‑Mureş

Text; Romeo Cuc, Raluca Sabău
Photo: Eliza Jurca

Normalcy, symmetry, simplici¬ty, structural logic, and an honest materiality: the project tests the limits of clichés about dwelling at the edge of a city, and attempts to partially erase the strict lines between the public and the pri¬vate space, so that it can turn into “home” for 4 families.

Le Shack
DAAA: Extending the Extension to a Peasant House

Text: Simina Dron
Poto: Antonia Pruteanu, Raul Dan Ardelean

Saint Friday Cottage is the story of a place and of some people—a place in the countryside, close to the spectacular “Transfăgărășan” mountain road. Some good people retreat¬ed from Bucharest, to their inherited family house, sporting a porch and a garden. They refurbished and laid it out as a home for them and their 2 children, on the ground floor, and as guest accommodation, in the attic.
2020 scared away foreign tourists (which had been their bulk business) but triggered an avalanche of accom¬modation requests from Bucharest dwellers just com¬ing out of lockdown. As compared to all the previous years, when the season would end of its own accord with the clo¬sure of the Transfăgărășan, the need for fresh air and for a city break continued at the same pace even when the weather cooled down. It was thus necessary to create a separate space, where the guests could dine, protected from the wind, rain and cold (…)

The New Life of the Roşia Nouă Homestead

Project, Text & Photo: Loredana Gaiţă, Miodrag Stoianov

A traditional farm in Arad County, in the area around the MureșRiver, was transformed to re¬ceive groups of friends, sportspeople, scouts, and to host varied activities.

Ski Pavilion, Piricica/Piricske, Harghita
a‑platz

Text: a‑platz
Photo: a‑platz, Szigeti Vajk István (clădire), Antoine Séguin (machetă)

Located 10 km from Miercurea Ciuc, in the heart of the Harghita mountains, this project responds to a specific re¬quest: the design of a pavilion for families and children at the base of the ski slope.
Simplicity lies at the heart of the project. We im¬agined a pavilion that can be used all around the seasons, with a large porchon its whole perimeter, to be used in a free and spontaneous ways. (…)

The Wooden Church of Urşi Village
A Microhistory of Restoration within the Local Community (2009–2020)

Text Mirela Duculescu, Raluca Munteanu
Photo: Mihai Bodea, Camil Iamandescu, Thomas Laschon, Pro Patrimonio

Sixteen Oak Barn
HILBERINKBOSCH architecten: An Oak Extension of a Modular Traditional Farmhouse, Hilberinkbosch

Text: HILBERINKBOSCH architecten
Photo: René de Wit, Breda/Inga Powilleit, Haarlem

Traditionally, most farmhouses in the Meierij of Hertogen¬bosch, a former administrative realm or bailiwick, have their separate parts—living quarters, storage space and cow¬sheds—integrated into a single building. Over time, how¬ever, these compact buildings frequently would become too cramped to house all of these functions and a separate barn would be added. These were usually built from locally available materials and largely followed the structural pat¬tern of the farmhouses themselves.

In 2017 we were told that seven of the century old oak trees in our yard were in bad shape. They had to be cut down. Instead of following the usual path and selling the trees to the paper industry, we decided to reinstate an an¬cient tradition. And so, by replacing a collage of obsolete shelters and sheds, we would, in line with our farm’s mon¬umental character, build a new barn with locally harvested materials employing traditional techniques. Adding a cou¬ple of oak tree trunks we obtained from the nearby Wam¬berg estate, we had enough timber to construct the new barn from cut down trees. (…)

Have a Good Trip!

Text: Jakub Charousek, Roberta Curcă

The Czech Centre Bucharest started the Instagram project called Protect Public Space in 2017, back then under the lead of František Zachoval. In the beggining the project was very uncurated, mainly due to the fact that we were just getting to know Romania more and we were fascinated by all possible, more or less bizarre structures. One of the rem¬nants of these times is definitely Nr. 17 on the map, the ven¬tilation shaft of the Municipal Stadium from Pitesti. Never¬theless, we were also inspired and influenced by the Aliens and Herons project done by Pavel Karous, Czech sculptor and pedagogue.

The Aliens and Herons project maps plastic art in public areas which was made in the 70´s and the 80´s in Czechoslovakia, or how Karous calls it the „4% Art.“ At that time, Czechoslovakian legislation would oblige eve¬ry state funded contruction project to spend 1–4% of the budget on decorating and cultivating the public space around, therefore kindergartens, schools, hospitals, admin¬istrative buildings and large infrastructure projects such as bridges or highways would be surrounded by art.

Inspired by Aliens and Herons, we started to make our Pro¬tect Public Space project more cohesive and it was just a matter of time before we would transform the exclusive¬ly online Instagram project into something material as well. (…)

Rural (Sur)faces

Text: Köllő Miklós
Photo: Szigeti Vajk‑István, Lukács Géza

Köllő Miklós and his team (Larix Stido) are the authors of several works published in our mag¬azine. About all of of these works are in the Székler Country in Transylvania and most of them in the countryside. Miklós himself lives with his family in his ancestral home in Ciuma¬ni village. We asked him to write a bit about the rural and about architecture, but mostly about things outside architecture or, apparently, be¬yond architecture. Several small public projects accompany this text. (Zeppelin)

DOSSIER: Spații publice/public spaces
Intro

Text: DO ARCHITECTS
Photo: Norbert Tukaj, DO ARCHITECTS

This short dossier starts in fact before the introduction you are just reading. The opinion piece on rural space and the recent works of the Larix Studio closes the dossier on vil¬lage architecture; it also includes a public space project, one of the most persecuted programs in a rural world that has to deal with underfunding, migration and abandonment, but also with individual interests and poor civic association.
Unsurprisingly, the Romanian city deals with similar issues: public space is the hunting ground where we all clash to¬gether, a shapeless mass from which morsels are grabbed or abandoned. To this we add a type of urbanism that works mainly for individual private interests or for the pride and delusional fantasies of the city mayors, and what we get is the harsh reality of the Romanian cities.

A seemingly modest project, easy going but sensitive, such as the street transformed by Planwerk in Cluj, is for the time being an exception that we believe should become an urgent model of good practice.

We also have two international examples, with an impor¬tant theme and an equally relevant interpretation

Urbanizing the Non‑urban

DO ARCHITECTS: Ogmia City Public Space Conversion, Vilnius

Text: DO ARCHITECTS
Foto: Norbert Tukaj, DO ARCHITECTS

Ogmia City is a multifunctional complex located in the northern part of Vilnius Ogmia, evolving from an under‑utilized outlet center to fully fledged and fully integrated city quarter. This enormous 12‑hectare territory, located only a few kilometers from the centre of Vilnius, has until very recently been largely overlooked by locals and visitors alike—merely a destination for bargain‑hunters and homemakers—certainly not an attractive place to go and enjoy your leisure time.

The structural changes that have transformed Ogmia City area into an ‘open air’ shopping centre, were based on the principles of the formation of the historic city centre, where the streets are the highest quality public spaces. Here too, streets, squares, footpaths and parks together create a view of the city within a city. And like a city, territory is an endless work in progress—it will continue to grow and evolve organically.

The design ensures that a pedestrian‑friendly environment is prioritized, (…)

Molnar Piuariu Street, Cluj
planwerk

Text & Photo planwerk arhitectură şi urbanism

The figures below are usually present in our „Credits” sec¬tion. We showed them here because, as dry as they may seem, they do express quite well the purpose and the fun¬damental character of the project; total area: 4.000 sqm; pedestrian surface increase: +124%; road surface decrease: −55%; green area increase: +151%; planted trees: 48. The transformation from the usual and appalling state of Romanian public space to decency and urbanity is so profound, that you cannot speak just about some technical prowess, that would somehow precede architecture. Hwre, the technique actually means planning skills, spatial re thinking, economy of means, creative strategy. To which, of course, some design is added. (Ștefan Ghenciulescu)

Hills over Bikes
Cobe: Karen Blixen Plads, Copenhagen

Text: Cobe
Foto/Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST

At more than 20,000 m2, Karen Blixens Plads is one of the largest public squares in Copenhagen. The project was supported by a generous donation from the private Danish foundation A.P. Møller Fonden. Situated between the Uni¬versity of Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Library at the university’s campus, the combined public square and uni¬versity plaza is designed as a carpet that covers an undulat¬ing terrain of small hills and breaks the large space up into smaller zones with room for activities both on and inside the hills. The three bicycle hills were created as cast concrete shells clad with

ZOOM

Between Street and Water

Text: Alina Măldărescu
Photo: Cosmin Dragomir

The context is pragmatic: in Voluntari, in an area with in¬tensive building, there is an elongated site, adjacent to the street and in direct connection with the water on the opposite side. The first gesture, however, consciously contradicts the temptation to place a long bar, perpendicular to the street. The project assumes its reinterpretation of the relationship that a construction has with the public space. To live, to travel, to do, to tinker; activities that involve in theory a spatial delimitation but that translate into the reality experienced through an unclear limit. Here is therefore the proposition of a placement on the lot that becomes a filter between the outside and the inside world. (…)

Not Your Usual Shop
Bogdan Ciocodeică: Lunet Eyewear Signature Store

Text: Bogdan Ciocodeică
Foto/Photo: Kinga Tomos

Opening a store—any kind of store—in this day and age it is still a brave endeavour. But for Lunet Eyewear this is in a way a natural evolution. They started in 2019 as an on¬line business, and, during the pandemic, they went for a hybrid relation with their clients: one could order for free models, try them at home (“Home Try On” is the actual name of the platform) and then purchase at will. Therefore, starting their first signature store is a logical development. The brief asked for a pleasant, merry and safe environment, encouraging friendly togetherness but also allowing for some privacy. (…)

Dodged House, Lisbon
BUREAU (Daniel Zamarbide) with Leopold Banchini Architects

Text; Bureau (Daniel Zamarbide)
Foto/Photo; Dylan Perrenoud

The crisis that hit Portugal ten years ago produced an in¬credible number of abandoned spaces. The two main cities, Porto and Lisbon, offered a landscape of ruins and shut down buildings that charmed an international community longing for southern romanticism. Ever since, the two cities have been taking action towards renewing their historical centers; all the effort led to the renovation of a fair quantity of the abandoned houses, probably also fueled by a sensitive and cultivated approach from Portuguese architects.

This landscape of shut buildings was made up by numerous opaque facades hiding the interiors as if their life disappeared or froze, waiting for better times to open their windows again and let sunshine in; streets with no windows, faces without eyes.

This particular situation evolved faster in Lisbon. The reconstruction of the city centre attracted an aggressive Airbnb economy, thus re creating a well known phenomenon that other cities in Europe had already gone through. The Air Bed & Breakfast also produces an Air Economy with implications and consequences that will fatally show in time. (…)

Plans

Text: Mugur Grosu
Photo: Alexandru Oglindă

Six Frenchmen get off the plane and start following a bunch of football fans, thinking they will lead them to the stadium. They reach a pub in the old town where the others start drinking. A couple of beers later they realize that the supporters were not Hungarians but Ukrainians, and what they thought was Budapest was in fact another capital that had once dreamed itself to be Little Paris, one of the hosts of this peculiar European Football Championship which has sent the fans on a fool’s errand through 11 European cities.

Delicate shifts of overall simple forms, archetypical elements and refined details give identity and human scale to both the cost-effective prisms in Wetzikon and the posh urban villa in Küsnacht.