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Text: Ştefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Cosmin Dragomir, Daniel Miro

The area defined by the Polonă and Eminescu Streets and Șoseaua Ștefan cel Mare is part of a rather old part of the Romania capital, Bucharest, with quiet streets, and all sorts of architecture, from imposing villas and pretty blocks of flats, to old slum houses. There are many poor people there, although the social structure is rapidly changing. It does not have the prestige and coherence of some of its adjoining neighbourhoods, and, as such, it also hardly contains any protected areas.

Text: Mugur Grosu

What can be more comforting when you get lost than the landmark on the map telling you where you are: you are here. Maybe a simple sign that indicates a destination. No wonder that in 2014 MoMA acquired for its permanent collection a representation of the red tear-shaped symbol that the Danish designer Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen had created for Google Maps.

Organisers: Goethe-Institut, Zeppelin, Stardust Architects

Intro: Brîndușa Tudor, Anca Cioarec, Ștefan Ghenciulescu

On the occasion of the Bauhaus centennial, Goethe Institutes all around the world have organized special programs; they have brought exhibitions, movies, lecturers etc., but they have also organized their own events, pretty much everywhere, in cooperation with local organizations:

ElectroPutere AIR (artists in-residence) is a program of the Centre for Art Club ElectroPutere developed within the framework of the creative, production and research centre, located in the city of Craiova in southwestern region of Romania.

Refurbishing a dwelling is a sort of a constant architects’ job: most times, this is how you start your career but, and this is also valid for very famous architects, these interior design projects continue to show up long after your starting years.

Text: Elena Stancu
Photo: Cosmin Bumbuț

Five years ago, we were renting a cramped one-bedroom in Piața Rosetti, Bucharest. We lived in a cold, dark twenty-five square meter room with high ceilings, in a formerly nationalized building.

Proiect: Starh
Text: Ştefan Ghenciulescu
Foto: Radu Malașincu

A little context. Good practices, openness and modest heritage

Reporter: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Arjan Bronkhorst, Fred Erns, Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Georgiana Ghenciulescu

The title above is not a journalistic metaphor, but is in fact the name of Amsterdam’s oldest museum (after the Rijksmuseum), established in the 19^th century in a very special 17^th-century house: the home of a rich bourgeois in Amsterdam’s golden age, which has a church as its culminating and hidden point. This is not a domestic chapel, but a public church, complete with an altar, pulpit, organ, upstairs gallery, vaults, statues, benches and seating for about 150 people, and so on: a unique example of a public space and sacred place, knowingly integrated into a civil dwelling.

Project, photo: Mircea Vasvari
Text: Cosmin O. Gălățianu

My colleague, Vasvari

I met Mircea Vasvari ten years ago, as we were both getting ready for admission to the university. I was coming, as many others were, as provincials (some absurdly coming from hundreds of km away), every Saturday and Sunday, to Bucharest, and we were attending five hours of drawing and descriptive geometry

Project initiators: Zeppelin, Ideilagram

December 22, 1989 marked not only the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, but also the end of the megalomaniac communist project to demolish and then rebuild Romanian cities. Thirty years on, the collective memory of these destructions is fading away, while the aggression against the cities continues, even in an opposite paradigm – that of ultraliberal development.

Text: Jean Craiu
Photo: Aleix Bagué

The MG house is in a residential neighbourhood in the town of Sant Cugat de Vallès, a small place, 5 km away from the outskirts of Barcelona (measuring from the les Planes neighbourhood limits), between the hills of Collserola and De Galliners.

The small yet functionally complicated building, uses all possible means to ensure a small scale and a dignified look, fit for the sensible historic areas where it lies. At the same time, the project literally digs up one of the city’s old water courses and generates a small space open to the public.