Articles published by: Nickname

To design a vineyard in a traditional, famous vine area, enjoying valuable vernacular architecture, poses three essential problems for architects: to insert the new building within the traditional architecture of the area, to seek new ways of expression of modern, industrial technology of producing wine, or to start from scratch, from the mythical, sacred connotations of wine. A well-documented inquiry will bring valuable international examples to light.
The idea of Konyari Vineyard is quite simple, and consists in the pursuit of ideal relationship to landscape.

A separate complex of three mansions located in Brno’s exclusive residential area. The location of the complex on the southwest slope with an attractive view of forest and the Brno trade fair grounds made it imperative to orientate and open up the mansions as much as possible in this direction. The mansions stand on a steep slope, with two storeys facing the street on the north side and four storeys on the south side; on the northeast of the buildings there are underground garages. The roof of the garages on the boundary between the premises and the pavement of a neighbouring street forms the entrance area with a green belt, a car park for visitors and a dustbin porch. The entrance is designed in order to be parallel on the east with the public pavement.

PROMONTORIO was founded in Lisbon, in 1988, by Joao Perloiro (Lisbon TU, 87), Joao Luis Ferreira (Lisbon TU, 88), Paulo Perloiro (Lisbon TU, 88), Paulo Martins Barata (Lisbon TU, 88, and Ph.D ETH Zurich, 00) and Pedro Appleton (Lisbon TU, 93), shortly after graduation, having recently opened an office in Madrid with Adrian Beloso-Baker as partner. Underlying its approach to the urban form, the work of PROMONTORIO has often been identified with the pursuit of a system of robustness (solidity, stability and durability) both in terms of representational meaning and technical research.

The building sites have been mushrooming everywhere in Bucharest. You can neither escape such energy, nor ignore it. On Eminescu or Dacia Streets, here, at a stone’s throw from our office, everywhere, people are building, renovating, restoring, and arranging things. The city smells as if it tried to regain its life and identity. So, I think it’s easier for everybody to ignore, to be more tolerant, and forget Ceausescu “who built so much and these guys are unable to paint what he did.” You tend to miss how they put up new henhouse-like blocks or raise up transparent, outdated office buildings skywards, and at a blink of an eye old heritage buildings are erased, not to mention the modern heritage about which only a few know about.

The trio Gregoire Jeanmonod, Elric Petit, and Augustin Scott de Martinville, present the Plus is more collection. Six objects designed respecting the good Swiss rigour  however interpreting it in an even playful way like in the case of the wool rug “Miles”. Starting from a children game, the carpet is a blown up version of the traces left by a toy truck.

Buzesti Street is one of the central arteries of Bucharest in the middle of a facelift process. Its image changes from day to day, new area urban plans are made and remade, old area urban plans are challenged, the area is becoming even more dense, there is first of all an attempt to limit real estate speculations and to give a planning solution for a number of problems such as those related to the traffic, and secondly, there is the result we can see for the time being, at least from the point of view of the common citizen, which is far from being a satisfactory one.

The atrium building on the Jussieu university campus, near the historic center of Paris, extends and completes the grid plan that architect Edouard Albert designed in the 60s to serve 45 000 students and researchers. The response formulated by Peripheriques for the extension is based on the existing system, where buildings are laid out in a crown configuration; but at the same it deforms it:: where Albert laid out a single patio, Peripheriques have planned two. One of them is covered by the bridge-buildings raised on pilotis to make short-cuts in the ring like circulation itinerary, and forms a “vertical place” that groups all the movements of the buildings, This concrete space opposes its heaviness and hardness to the light-weight metal cladding of its outer skin.

Brocade, heavy velvet, wool clothing, this is how people used to get dressed more than a hundred of years ago. This is why, when they entered the concert halls, their clothes and the plush of the chairs made a perfect combination for the music to sound crystal clear. The sound absorption coefficients depended so much on the clothes of the spectators, that when the fashion changed, the sound of some halls simply faded away.

Baroque, hedonistic, playful, inspired by childhood memories, from simplest toys to most innocent feelings, Dragos Buhagiar is not afraid of being a nostalgic. He stopped building walls a long time ago: he turned himself into space-generating objects, objects interacting with the actor, playing the game, defining, challenging or getting into drama. He says a scenographer should really be specific, by no means opulent, actually assisting the director and the actors to develop a theme.

Interview by Mariana Celac
Photo: Irina Vencu, the Liviu Ciulei archive
English translation: Magda Teodorescu

Mariana C.: Some years ago, we met at a Festival of Architecture Film in the French Institute. Then, you chaired a jury that awarded the first prize to a film (directed by two colleagues, a filmmaker, and an architect) about architecture and power. I think it was ten years ago. Lots of events have happened since then; a new generation of architects came “to the fore.”