Articles published by: Nickname

Text & photo: Mugur Grosu

I am one of those people who, although having lived here for so many years, never feels quite at home. Whenever I meet people like me, we joke saying we’re Constanța’s diaspora in Bucharest. It’s like in our veins flows a fundamentally different thing — a morose cocktail pounding adversely, in which the sickness of the golden fleece seekers collides with acute sense of exile, left by the shadow of Ovid at Tomis—which has remained, basically, the same barbaric land.

Text: Constantin Goagea

We always believed that office space and all its contemporary design has been and always will be absolutely incompatible with the great outdoors. It was either one or the other. Because when we think of nature, we think of leaves, grass and bugs, rain and mud (not potted plants and not office flowers lit with some super lamp, or even worse, some plastic print hanging on the plaster wall).

The 10 years construction period of this villa on the shores of a lake on the outskirts of Bucharest allows to read the evolution of the architectural philosophy of Starh office.

Over 110 museums are now disappearing because the previously nationalized buildings are given back to their rightful owners. Local administrations, which have the right to buy them back, are not interested or have no funding. Thus, essential urban public places vanish, and sometimes incredible collections will com­pletely disappear. A recent exhibition and installation at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant was meant to raise awareness about this shameful development.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc
Illustrations: Urban Regeneration workshop #Tudordurabil

A few dozen students and professors from the Faculty of Architecture in Strasbourg and supervisors from Brussels had a clear vision on the way the public space can be improved with minimal resources and interventions, following an urban regeneration workshop for Tudor neigh­borhood in Târgu Mureș:

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Irina Pata

It is quite difficult to write an editorial about architecture and the city after the tragedy from Club Colectiv. The number of victims is growing, and among them there is a large number of architects and urban planners.

• Album launch: „Dwelling together. 6 apartment buildings by ADN BA”
• Conference: Andrei Șerbescu, Adrian Untaru, Bogdan Brădățeanu

Book on sale now

Volume nominated for the Bucharest Architecture Annual Awards 2016 –  Architecture Books 

We go on a journey through trees that give energy, artificial organisms, invented materials, old factories that become centers of a new urban culture. New types of practice are changing architecture, design and cities in Romania. The context is difficult, the resources are ridiculously low. So what? You find your courage, do it yourself at a superior level, invent and, most importantly, you work with others.

Text & photo: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

This article is not about the already famous gigantic cross with twinkling lights proposed for University Sq as a monument to the 1989 Revolution; it is only the latest in a series of authoritarian and pompous actions that have been rained upon us from various city administrations in the past years. Impaled potatoes, grotesque busts, monstrous princes, cumbersome allegories…

Beyond the lack of artistic culture of the commissioners and the fact that they waive any advice or public consultation, the problem seems to be the need for bombastic: in order to remember or simply to honor something good and beautiful, you must exaggerate, look for grandeur, size, magnitude and maximum visibility. They must be seen, literally jump at you. Otherwise, the monument doesn’t work, it seems.

Let’s not beat around the bush: those of us who do not live in the southern part of Bucharest rarely go there, unless we have some specific reason. Exceptions are usually parks and malls.

Traditionally the poorest side of Bucharest, the South received a new blow with the demolitions and especially Ceaușescu’s sinister avenue, which literally cut the town in half and isolated the south even deeper.