Articles published by: Nickname

Alba Carolina Citadel – a story about world heritage destruction advertised as cultural valorisation and supported by EU funds.

Recently, in our 93 issue, I was pointing out a highly questionable intervention carried out on the Alba Carolina citadel from Alba Iulia, important reference for Vauban citadels. The previous text was especially impugning the concept of the project conceived by arch. Gheorghe Lancrajan-Franchini assonant to the European level principles.

Anish Kapoor’s installation for Monumenta 2011 is a true architectural piece of work, an exceptional discourse about interior and exterior, limits, structure, and scale.
Ever since its opening during the World Exhibition of 1900, Grand Palais was a major exhibition space in France’s capital.

I am referring to those few hours when the pedestrians and bikes were allowed on the bridge. No one knows why, but even the wedding party from the little church nearby came to have their pictures taken on the bridge. Many curious people rushed in for a couple of hours. Bikes came out of the blue. And the roller skaters too!

More or less on Aurora and Bucharest, on factories and blocks and on art as a sophisticated riddle.

One room on Plantelor Street. After 20 minutes of talk with Cristi, am so absorbed that I almost forget we are recording it. We talk about film and architecture, what is beyond definitions. He speaks about the cinema beyond the clichés of a dictionary, while I talk about the unspoken side of architecture, the void.

The architecture of this block of flats is mostly due to the critical reference to an unfortunate context and to the negotiation between the individual and the collective.

Developed in one of the famous satellite-dormitory-cities of Bucharest, quiet yet lacking any character – besides the one given by some expensive and anachronic self-referential buildings, appearing from behind some giant fences – this project was from the very beginning marked by a critical-ironical detachment from the context.

Built in a public-private partnership, the new market in Celje was designed as a generator of life in the city centre able to resuscitate the surrounding area.

The town market is situated in the heart of the city. Ever since it was formed, in the middle of the previous century, the market has represented the centre of urban activity in the city.

The world is big. The top is not so big. I have escaped, ran away to get away from madness. And the time of holiday arrived. So, a low cost, the B?neasa Airport (remarkable, clearly), I push myself to complete the things I kept wishing for. From a health point of view, it was the right time. Getting relaxed I mean. I start reading a volume by Alessandro Baricco – “The Barbarians. An essay on the Mutation” – perhaps you heard of it, or even read it by now.

MASS Studio is showing that the architectural heritage left in an advanced stage of decay may be resuscitated, even though temporarily, through some inspired improvisations enlivened by a great idea.

A critical view on the difference between a true sustainability and the „green” demagogy in architecture.
Sustainability currently shares many qualities with God; supreme concept, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; creator and judge, protector, and (…) saviour of the universe and the humanity.