Articles published by: Nickname

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 You tend to miss how they put up new henhouse-like blocks or raise up transparent, outdated office buildings skywards, and at a blink of an eye old heritage buildings are erased, not to mention the modern heritage about which only a few know about.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.”

There wasa ticking, then the steps of some dancers endlessly rotating, an old lady winking at someone who was coming, gushes of light from a fountain decomposing in rogvaiv, some tune I must have heard once… and darkness. I have just described the outlines of a sensorial suggestive experience, and, certainly, I conjured up many memories. Though it was rather blurred, yet tangible, that was Darren Almond’s installation If I had you (try the GOOGLE) I experienced four years ago at Palazzo della Ragione in Milan. 

Text and illustrations: Steven Holl ArchitectsFilmic urban space; around, over and through multifaceted spatial layers, is one of the central aims of this Hybrid Building complex with over 700 apartments sited adjacent to the old city wall of Beijing. The aspiration of the developer Modern Group is for an ultra-modern expression of 21st Century ecological urban living, in this 220,000 sq. m. project. Current development in Beijing is almost entirely “object buildings” and free standing towers. This “city within a city” envisions urban space as the central aim—as well as all the activities and programs that can support the daily life of over 2500 inhabitants: cafe’s, delis, laundry, dry cleaners, florists etc, line the main public passages. The eight towers are linked at the twentieth floor by a ring of cafes and services.
 

In 2002, the 2nd district local government of Budapest announced a limited design competition for the reconstruction of a building that was deemed obsolete as regards spatial distribution, functionality, and structures. In our winning design, we went beyond reconstruction and opted for new construction, believing that new is an organic continuation of old. In order to ensure the link between old and new, we kept the street-front wing of the building as being the most important section from both architectural and emotional points of view.