Articles published by: Nickname

Thank God that good things still happen on Earth. After I have written so many articles against aggressive advertising and against the nonsensical way of dealing with this issue in our country, here is the solution that I personally believe is a real perestroika. In short, the advertising law in Sao Paolo is working and, except for advertisers, nobody seems to notice any of its shortcomings; on the contrary, it is one of the most popular and the most publicly supported laws anyone has ever heard of.

Undoubtedly, there are three basic reasons why the Salk Laboratories are worth travelling 11,000 km, to the “end” of the western world, in La Jolla. The first one concerns the professional need of direct experience of an architectural masterpiece designed by Louis Khan in 1959-1965; it has indeed a deep spiritual meaning that cannot be captured from pictures or narratives and what is more, the prevailing geological and geographical landscape seems to make it a prisoner of trans-historic or cosmic eternity being thus unreachable by social and cultural changes.

When the distorted image of a straight beam is not an issue. Extension and reorganization of the Catholic University of Louvain

How to propose a contemporary intervention in a historical context? How to highlight an old building without reproducing it and without hiding the new construction? The answer
is maybe what we call “Escher architecture” (we are thinking about his work Print gallery): an outside space that becomes an inside space.

1900 and afterwards…

… when Primo Pari was living the mirage of the automobile culture. It was that very time of racing cars being born, of automobiles increasingly being part of life in the cities. Somewhere, actually nowhere, where his house is placed, popping up in the dust of a curve, a certain count Ambrosio tries to convince Florence Pari to let her husband be his partner in racing, as deadly then as they are now. A black and white sequence in which Ambrosio charges: “Florence, please, do learn this by heart: if you love somebody who loves you don’t every take his dreams away”. And Florence replies: “I think this is a great line in a book, except life is more complicated; however, I accept him to be with you in racing for a reason I will not declare to myself and for all of us to keep our composure.”

The sparrows tree
Listen to what you see

In an urban setting filled with wire and cables hanging from posts bent over welded fences, imprecisely stuck among broken tiles and cracked pavement, along coloured panels, iron sheets and trestles connected by pavement chains, tens of phone cabins sort of melt until getting transparent. Abandoned carcases, increasingly turned futile, outdated by the technological progress, an urban species on the stage of extinction, phone cabins are all bundled into a lumber of small things currently called the public space of Bucharest.

One should not stay a long time in Venice to notice that the city is not willing to reveal its contemporary face. The reason is quite simple: in the last 300 years, Venicians were not particularly attracted by the “new” architecture, having already a rather dense and coherent place, needing interventions occasionally and, when these became inevitable, they have very quickly taken a local shape. Sporadically, interventions pointed out by architects such as Carlo Scarpa or Vittorio Gregotti brought something “new”, but Venice has no element to mark the present so far.

Many donkeys-little donkeys across the leading article as you have never seen before. First thought was to publish the Austrian FELD72 group in this issue. Last autumn in Sofia, I had seen one of their presentations that among others included the project of a hotel named “Million Donkey”.

(E)migration of the new and the aesthetics tuned to the spirit of the age
Modernist architecture spread in the United States following World War II, between 1950-1965, when the recently emigrated masters picked up again their drawing board and made their ideas known in the architectural schools. This process of finding a new territory for the avant-garde will focus on the “monumentalization” of industrial technology.

Adriana Mereuta: UNICREDIT PAVILION Contemporary Art and Culture Centre, Bucharest
Photo: Ioana Nitu

In a capital in which art spaces tend to raise at the level of a rather undeveloped town, any new such insertion turns into an event. But UNICREDIT PAVILION is an event even beyond this sad context. And that because, first of all, it is not about a new gallery, but an independent contemporary art and culture centre – an operation of a new and strong identity (including an architectural one). The centre is the third stage of a programme initiated by Razvan Ion and Eugen Radescu, starting with the PAVILION Magazine and going on with the Bucharest Biennale. The founders of the centre took on the social and political element of art and wished the pavilion be a place meant for research and production and not a merely passive exhibition of local works. That is why the pavilion is not simply located somewhere in the town but it actually tries to be a place adequate for reflection, possibly action too, on the city and the society.

There is a certain “syndrome of the island” which cannot be avoided in this place. Even though we are not an island, we are rather far from the main cultural access routes, the key architectural events, the sources of inspiration and the production hubs of current modernity. In Romania, the contemporary product architecture and design are still too weakly linked by the European modernity, either because of a poor education, or perhaps economic issues or various tastes and a confused understanding of what urbanity, the beauty and the pleasure to live stand for.