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Zeppelin #160 (winter_2020-2021)

Edito: The application form, the typewriter and the golden flat

Text, object, photo: Mugur Grosu

In our collective imaginary in Romania, the writer is still associated with the quill and pen. And, late at night, with weary lashes, they will still blow out the light bulb, out of sheer habit. This is no metaphor, those of us living under Communism used to write by candlelight, like bards of old times, because of daily power cuts. Once again because of Communism, here the typewriter is not symbolic for literature but has remained the embodiment of state authorities. During the “Golden Age” of Ceausescu, Decree no. 98 of 28 March 1983, stated that any typewriter had to get an approval from the police (Miliția). (…)

DOSSIER: EXPO
Intro
TEXT Ştefan Ghenciulescu

In‑between
David Chipperfield Architects: James Simon Gallery, Museum Island, Berlin

Project: David Chipperfield Architects
Text: Lorena Brează
Photo: Laurian Ghiniţoiu

Enough is Enough
Responsibility for Real: 2020 Timişoara Architecture Biennial

Text: Anca Cioarec, Brînduşa Tudor,Raluca Rusu, Alexandru Ciobotă
Photo: Bianca Azap, Dan Purice

The Romanian Museum of Collectivization

Text: Cosmina Goagea
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu

Pocket Interiors.
A Contemporary Telematic Novel

Project: Zeppelin Design
Text: Constantin Goagea
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu

The Water Castle and The Tower of Arts in Turnu Severin

Project: Zeppelin Design
Text: Constantin Goagea
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu

URANUS NOW

Project & Text: URANUS NOW team
Photo: Tudor Constantinescu, Vlad Dudu, Andrei Bîrsan, URANU NOW team

A Storehouse with a View
The Mihai Oroveanu Archive at the Salonul de proiecte
TEXT Salonul de proiecte, skaarchitects –Kalliopi Dimou, Sorin Istudor

The Incredible and Sad Tale of a Lonely Contessa and Her House for the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate
TEXT Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Davide Tommaso Ferrando

From Near to Far
Visual Cartographies of the 2 Mai and Vama Veche Space
TEXT Iuliana Dumitru, Alex Axinte

ZOOM

The Urban Machine
MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre
TEXT OMA

The Electra Factory, Iaşi

Text:Alexandra Berdan
Photo: Katerina Nedelcu, Alexandra Berdan, Ancuţa Costandache

The Terminal as a Tool for Urbanity
Bus Terminal, Budaörs

Project: Intramuros
Text: Lorena Brează

The Light New Top
GV51 Penthouse Apartments, Belgrade

Project & Text: Studio ENND
Photo: Relja Ivanic

Urbanizing the Swiss Periphery
Igual Guggenheim Architects: 2 Collective Housing Projects

Project & Text: Sancho Igual, Yves Guggenheim
Photo: Radek Brunecky (Wetzikon), Beat Bühler (Küsnacht)

FABER. Independent Cultural Center, Timişoara
Interview with Oana Simionescu and Sergiu Sabău

Reporter: Lorena Brează
Photo: Farkas Pataki

Daydreaming

Text:Ştefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Radu Abraham, Ioana Sisea

Material‑scapes

Text: Sandra Demetrescu
Photo: Andrei Mateescu

Places in a Garden
Mânadelucru: Kindergarten in Bucharest

Text: Dorin Ştefan Adam, Lorena Brează
Photo: Vlad Pătru

The Meaning of Sculpture
Objects, Spaces and Learning at Kunsthalle Bega

PLANS

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Zeppelin #159 (autumn_2020)

Edito: The house inside the house and the outside house
Text Ştefan Ghenciulescu

At some point, Claudiu – who’s an artist – tells me: “You speak like a architect”. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, as it seemed to me that I avoided those terms of ours – section, functionalism, urban fabric, free plan, program or I don’t know what else. Claudiu goes on: “You, architects, when you talk about buildings – no matter their size or function -, you always call them `houses`”. He was right. For architects, any construction is, above all, a house. As if the original house, the primitive hut of the Abbé Laugier, had produced in the meantime only houses to live, to work, to learn, to gather, to pray and so on. (…)

Dossier: (Retro)Pioneers
Intro
TEXT Ştefan Ghenciulescu

Z33
A Pause from the City, a Background for the City
TEXT Lorena Brează

George Enescu’s house in Mihăileni
Campaign Journal for Architecture and Community, Stage 1
TEXT Mirela Duculescu, Andreea Machidon, Raluca Munteanu, Raluca Ştirbăţ, Şerban Sturdza
Photo: Camil Iamandescu, Raluca Munteanu, Şerban Sturdza, Pro Patrimonio

The Ambulance for Monuments
TEXT Lorena Brează

Neptune Baths
A Magical Place Spotted from a Broken Window

Project: Asociaţia Locus
Text: Lorena Brează
Photo: Herculane Project, Alex Danu, Martin Neagoe, Mihai Şom

Slanted House
The Focus Is Not on Humans, but on the Landscape

Project, text: Paradigma Ariadné
Photo: Attila Róbert Csóka

A New Sheet over an Old House
The Protective Construction for the Roman Mosaic Edifice (Tomis), Constanţa (1959–1967)
TEXT Irina Băncescu

MUZEON, Cluj
The Story of Your Jewish Neighbour

Project: Atelier MASS
Text: Camelia Sisak
Photo: Gouwy Lieven

Velocità

Project: Corvin Cristian Studio
Text: Ştefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Alex Sacalu, Corvin Cristian

To the Future and Back
Interview with Prof. Achim Menges, Director of the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) at the University of Stuttgart
INTERVIEW Lorena Brează, Ştefan Ghenciulescu

ZOOM
Microarchitecture at School
TEXT Justin Baroncea

F. A chair
After the Chair, a Stool
Design, Text: Fabricate

OPEN AIR Society
Romanian Design Week 2020

Curatorial concept: Romanian Design Week & Zeppelin Design
Exhibition design: Zeppelin Design+Ping‑Pong Contest winners
Graphic design: Radu Manelici+Sebastian Pren
Text: Constantin Goagea
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu

PLANS

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Horia Marinescu: Exorcism through drawing. The Romanian 1984 & Uranus Now

In 2019 we organized the “Uranus Now” exhibition about the huge urban destructions and megalomanic projects of Nicolae Ceausescu. We focused on the Uranus neighborhood in Bucharest, almost completely destroyed and the place where the sinister People’s House was built. But we really wanted not to talk only about architecture and heritage, but also about people

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Edito: The application form, the typewriter and the golden flat

Text, object, photo: Mugur Grosu

In our collective imaginary in Romania, the writer is still associated with the quill and pen. And, late at night, with weary lashes, they will still blow out the light bulb, out of sheer habit. This is no metaphor, those of us living under Communism used to write by candlelight, like bards of old times, because of daily power cuts.

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Edito: The house inside the house and the outside house

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

One month ago, Claudiu Cobilanschi and the team from The Project Salon invited me to a discussion about the archive of Mihai Oroveanu[1].. Obviously, we talked a little before the recorded discussion. At some point, Claudiu – who’s an artist – tells me: “You speak like a architect”. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, as it seemed to me that I avoided those terms of ours – section, functionalism, urban fabric, free plan, program or I don’t know what else.

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Indoors, in a tent. Dwelling practices during the pandemia

Text & illustrations: Alex Axinte

Against the backdrop of the state of emergency, I watched the transformation of dwelling practices, with a focus on children’s games. The research was based on my family as a case study: two adults, two primary school children, one dog and one cat, isolated in an inter‑war Bucharest apartment. As seen by a homeowning family, where the parents can work remotely, without any infected close ones, with access to the internet and to technology, it was easy for me to dwell on this microscopic issue. But why this research? Well, for 2 months, family isolation was pretty much the only tangible reality. Thus, I attempted to discern, within the tactics and strategies of isolated living, some lessons to be learned for life after isolation.

Order and Disorder

The distinction between tactics and strategies is understood by Michel de Certeau (1988), from the perspective of power relationships that emerge and express through space. While strategies “postulate a place that can be delimited” (p.36), tactics are “calculated action[s], determined by the absence of a proper locus” (p.37). In a domestic context, this construction is also illustrated by the cohabitation of parents and children. Here, tactics and strategies are manifested on a daily basis, through the ritualic ballet between order and disorder. That is, all that mix of toys, clothes, and bodies, which children produce out of the need to play, and which parents see as disorder and attempt to limit, at least in terms of space (Stevenson & Prout, 2013). In this entire choreography, the house is not just a neutral background, but an active participant, determining the living practices and registering their effects, at the same time.

Play from an Architect’s Perspective

The micro‑research was based on the methods of observation, autoethnography and cartography, supported by the instruments of drawing, photography, and diary. As seen by Abrams and Hall (2006) like the “the conceptual glue linking the tangible world of buildings, cities and landscapes with the intangible world of social networks and electronic communications.” (p.12), mapping can function in the domestic context, like one of the ‘specific tricks’ called upon by Bruno Latour (2005) to illustrate the exchanges between humans and non‑humans. Mapping traced the transformation of living practices in isolation, highlighted in relation to the geography of the house. The house was mapped as a node of the relationships between the actors, and time was compressed to one generic day, as situations became co‑present. The architectural ethnographic drawing included observation, participation, and description, supporting cartography as the main research method. To Huda Tayob (2018), this way of drawing is aimed at being rather ‘imprecise’ than to be an objective representation, acting as a narrative ‘portrait’. The drawing tactically adopts the architectural conventions of floor plans, aiming to value subaltern spatial practices, represented, here, by children and play. Operated as a generative, and not simply a representative method, the drawing contributed to the identification of 3 types of inter‑connected spatial practices: the tents, from outside and on the outside.

The House in the Time of the Pandemic

Days in isolation alternated, from all nice and well, to anxieties deriving from the need of personal space and excess monotony. Where adults managed with headphones, Facebook, sleeping, movies, and others, it was a bit different for the children. They built tents. That is, some sort of domestic installations, where roleplay comes to life not just through costumes and lines, but also through furniture. The season of tents started by turning the bunk bed into a Caravan. The destinations and driving breaks lasted for a few days. Then came a series of enactments, from the Beach Tent and the seawater flood in the parents’ bedroom, to the epic camping on the balcony, with warm clothing and reading late into the night in the House in the Woods. The big house, the culmination of domestic tents, was such an ambitious and ample project, that it charged the way of living for the entire family. Then came, among others, the Library for Old and Young, where programming dominated the spatial layout, or the post‑apocalyptic Bottomless Pit thriller, where the scenography of disorder was perfectly articulated on the topic. Pre‑existing practices, tents, and play saw a spectacular increase during isolation, but decreased in scale and frequency as restrictions were being lifted. Nevertheless, some practices became permanent, such as seizing the balcony for playing.

At the same time, tents and play were contemporary with the outside world that entered the house through technological windows—internet, phone, radio, TV—sharing, at points, improbable spatial proximities. When film editing was being discussed in the kitchen, the “Friend Sisters” YouTube channel was being recorded in the children’s room, and when the department meeting was being held in the office, a whispered experiment involving borax glycerine and toothpaste took place in the bathroom just across the corridor.

After a first harsh period of isolation, we started going out. The street in front of the building became a playground once again: bike riding, handball, doing laps, relay, and chalk. Here, the parked car became a sort of second balcony, used as a sitting, breathing, and monitoring place. When parks reopened, the street only preserved the bike‑riding reflex.

State of tent

Home tents may be seen as an attempt of ritual recovery of the lost mix of rides, destinations, and interactions which used to order our day. At the same time, tents materialize the memory of our camping at 2 Mai, as a spatial practice, a temporal rhythm, and a way of relating within the family. Here, a lot of the functional hierarchies and determinations, generated by city life, are cancelled, and new, more horizontal ones are created on the spot, in a time that is carefree and adventurous. Thus, the need for a tent is not just the spatialised expression of anxious creativity, but also an attempt to re‑enact an ideal situation: the state of tent.

Lessons, risks, and potential

But what have we learned from all these? We noticed that the need for domestic space is rather qualitative, not quantitative, that nooks and crannies help, and that versatile objects and spaces are a better support for the unpredictable and dynamic contemporary living. Tents have shown that de Certeau’s excessively binary image is much more nuanced at carpet level. There are not two distinct groups in confrontation, but rather switching roles and position, borrowing each other’s modus operandi. Order and disorder become ways of relating in a practice of living. Besides, the mapping of tents and games in isolation showcased the children’s capacity of transforming their surrounding space, through negotiation, and self‑organization.

The intensifying of tents in isolation was a consequence of disconnecting the house from the city. Thus, the house is claimed as part of an extended system, which includes relationships and exchanges with the exterior, physical and social spaces, creating, together, a relational living. By excessively glorifying ‘creative living’, we risk falling for another neo‑liberal perspective of the home as a self‑sufficient consumer good. The house as a surrogate for the world may become a threat to the contemporary city, already so strongly individualized and privatized. Maybe a more fertile result of experimenting what is rather an absence or doubtful replacements of anything like online school, library, museum, and theatre, let alone playing, sports, or socialization, is that we could retrospectively appreciate the ‘original’ models. They are mediated by physical spaces, reproduced through a practice, by a collectivity, which they, in turn, support. So we stay indoors, build tents, but, let’s not forget, we have a city to live!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Turning home tents from a domestic curiosity to a subject of research is due to the prodding and discussions with Bogdan Iancu, in the time of isolation. At the same time, my family members generously contributed to the documenting and reflections of the research.

*Tents / From the outside / On the outside

*From left to right and from top to bottom: Exploring the neighbourhood, School, Friend Sisters, Kitchen, Caravan, Office, Radio, Slime, Loudspeaker stories, Wood crafting, Bottomless Pit, Shopping, Fridge, School, Library for Old and Young, Going out, Pantry, Disinfection area, Building site, School, Movies, Cartoons, Grand House, Documentaries, Walking, Sea, House in the Woods, Vinyl fairy tales, Beach, Happy Bday, Tent, WhatsApp live, School, Tele‑Granny, Store, Office, Market, Recyclables, Exploring the neighbourhood, Grandparents, Running, Walking laps

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams J. & Hall P. (eds.) (2006), Else/Where: Mapping. New Cartographies of Networks and Territories. University of Minnesota Design Institute.

Certeau, Michel de (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, California.

Latour B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor‑Network‑Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stevenson, O. & Prout, A. (2013), Space for Play?: Families’ Strategies for Organizing Domestic Space in Homes with Young Children. Home Cultures, 10(2), 135–157.

Tayob, H. (2018), “Subaltern Architectures: Can Drawing Tell a Different Story?”, Architecture and Culture, 6(1), 203–222.

Alex Axinte is an architect, living and working in Bucharest. He is acting as an independent researcher from an intermediary possition between applied research, participatory design and civic engagement. Currently, he is a PhD student and a general training assistant at the Sheffield School of Architecture (SSoA), University of Sheffield. He is a co‑founder of studioBASAR.

CITEŞTE MAI MULT

Refurbishment and extension of a Villa in a Piedmontese village

Project, text: Romina Grillo, Liviu Vasiu
Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani e Marco Cappelletti

The project is about the refurbishment and the extension of a 1910 villa in a Piedmontese village. Located on the edge of the urban fabric and open towards the vast rice and agricultural fields, the villa is the last architectural object that connects the bourgeois world with the hard context of its countryside.

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The Cosmopolitan. BOGDAN & VAN BROECK – Turning an office building into a multifunctional assembly, Brussels

Project: BOGDAN & VAN BROECK
Text: Ştefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Jeroen Verrecht, BOGDAN & VAN BROECK, Luca Beel, memymom

We are taking back our city.

Houses in downtown European cities (and not only) are rapidly turning into offices, Airbnbs, hotels, etc. The Cosmopolitan project follows the exact reverse path: a former office building becomes a block of flats, with public functions on its first two levels.

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Bucharest Steampunk. ADN BA: Urban Spaces 2/ Mumuleanu

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu, Cosmin Dragomir, Daniel Miroțoi, Mihai Rotaru

The word steampunk conjures a mixture of Sci-Fi and nineteenth-century aesthetics: goggles over high hats, ladies’ hoop skirts and gentlemen’s frock coats matched with mechanic limbs, etc.

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