Articles published by: Nickname

Text & images: Cosmin Caciuc

 In believe that, at this moment, from a strictly historiographic point of view, both progressive ideology and cultural resistance may find a different kind of civic balance in what I would generally call the urbanity that reclaims the past of modernity, leaving behind the stereotypes of the antagonism which arised with the Modern Movement, based on the new (industrial) city versus the old (preindustrial) city.

Urban Report is a cross culture program bringing together theories and critical discourse on contemporary urban phenomena in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. This project was initiated in 2010 by Zeppelin, with the help of the Romanian Cultural Institute, through Cantemir program. In 2011, Urban Report consisted of three publications, a website and three DVDs. In 2012 this project was continued and integrated into Zeppelin magazine, with the support of ERSTE Stiftung under the EE-lab program.

Text: Constantin Goagea

The mission – is a project initiated by Eurodite and part of the DISC (Dutch Initiative for Sustainable Cities – www.disc-network.eu) activities. Together with Emil Boc, the Mayor of Cluj, Vice Mayors in Bucharest, Cluj, Constanta, Timisoara and Head Architects of Cluj and Bucharest, a representative of the port of Constanta, as well as other professionals in the connected ministry, we have been in an intense and dense visit to Rotterdam, Eindhoven and Utrecht. The top Romanian delegation met Vice Mayors and members of other ministries, their peers, and learned about projects already carried out and a way to manage. The mission worked out in these three days the targets of DISC platform, made to provide Dutch support to Romanian cities and their effort to build up initiatives meant to revive urban regions and areas ignored so far.

www – wall window workshop
Dan Perjovschi at Ruhr Triennale 2013

One of the main attractions of this years’ Ruhr Triennale was Dan Perjovschi’s www – wall window workshop. The artist held the workshop in the Bochum Jahrhunderthalle, a famous industrial building from the region, which now houses performative and visual art. Perjovschi’s intervention included works from his personal collection and contextual drawings, as well, about the building and the event itself.

Under the context of the past few years which generated a number of unfinished buildings, this proposal seems a real treat, a necessary one to say the least . Taking the basis, the structure of someone else’s project and giving it substance, finality and maybe a new vision of space.

29 Editor’s: Cindirellas
Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

30 Bearth & Deplazes Architekten: Rigor and Timelessness
> The headquarters of an insurance company in Landquart, Switzerland, designed by Bearth & Deplazes, recall almost pedagogically the principle of space defined by structure and Louis Kahn’s great lesson of critical modernism
Text: Cosmin Caciuc & Bearth & Deplazes Architekten

38 DOSSIER: Two small churches
> Romanian examples of fine sacred architecture – projects which go beyond processing an image to interrogating the essence of a programme, spatial typologies and structural principles
Text intro: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

40 Abruptarhitectura: A Church and Its Bell Tower
Text: Cristina Constantin

43 Alexandra Afrăsinei: Typological Recovery
Text: Alexandra Afrăsinei

48 Context or Abstraction
> Two office buildings in Víziváros, Budapest
Text: Levente Szabó

58 Bernardo Bader Architects: A Regional Archetype x
> Single-family home in Vorarlberg, Austria
Text: Cosmin Caciuc

62 H&P Architects: Blooming Bamboo Home. Humanitarian Architecture in Vietnam x
> A prototype of a modular dwelling, which can be adapted to several programmes, reacting as a living organism to weather conditions or to the needs of its inhabitants, being able to withstand the frequent floods in Vietnam
Text: Patricia Erimescu

66 www – wall window workshop: Dan Perjovschi at Ruhr Triennale 2013 x
> Contemporary art, a special event of transforming a famous industrial building in Ruhr Westphalia region, Germany, and a workshop led by Dan Perjovschi, who included works from his personal collection and contextual drawings, as well, about the building and the event itself.
Text: Ioana Calen

70 LIKE architects: The Andy Warhol Temporary Museum x
> A cultural space within a commercial space in Lisbon

72 bam! Bottega di architettura metropolitana: Soft Cube Above
> He installation in front of the MAXXI building in Rome

76 Zeppelin: Beyond the city
> The exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest focused on the recent territorial developments in rural Romania

Urban Report
80 El Campo de Cebada, Madrid: Democratic Urbanism in Difficult Times
> A visionary experiment in democratic urbanism, a space for social interaction and solving community problems
Text: AndreeaVrabie

Connected
86 LuelingSauer Architects: Space & Material
> Research projects on construction materials and textile technologies
Text: Cosmin Caciuc

92 McDowell+Benedetti: A Bridge in Full Swing
> The innovative swing bridge over the River Hull in United Kingdom, believed to be a World’s first, offers pedestrians the unique experience of riding on the bridge as it opens and closes to river traffic

An apartment from an interwar building.

We wanted to reinterpret some of the characteristic elements found in this apartment: wood finishes, lighting and space continuity, irregular geometry, the multitude of options for opening and closing spaces, the very different perspectives.

A flat’s redesign, Bucharest

An anonymous apartment building of the 30s, with one small flat per floor. No special architecture – on the contrary, awkward positions of the openings, non-functional corners; yet, at the same time, qualities that even the worst architecture at that time had and which hardly come up today: agreeable height, a well proportioned windows, an indescribable charm of bizarre connections between spaces, or of ordinary door joints with panelling and boarding.

‘What are you staring at us for ? Why are you taking pictures ? Get away from here ! Leave us in peace !’
We saw the homestead at a bend on the road which passes through the Râmeti village in the Western Carpathians. An incredible image : a house, a shed and a barn exactly as they used to be a hundred years ago and which now seem to exist only in ethnographic museums. Three elderly people, patching a thatch roof with a sheet of metal.

28 Editor’s #117 / In the countryside. For us, for them, for everyone
Text: Stefan Ghenciulescu

30 SANAA: Outside Paris

Text: Corina Laza
> Sanaa created for Louvre Lens Museum a building that is capable to dissolve itself in the landscape and whose galleries contradict the traditional canons of museology.