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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.

Modul Cărturești is a new bookstore and, in the future, also an important exhibition space in downtown Bucharest, on Academiei Street, accessible from the portico of the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism. The library does not simply take up a space, but also transforms it, being a first step towards reconstructing and, in fact, carrying on its original public and transparent character.

A project within I’M UAU program of Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism – Bucharest (UAUIM)
Text: Justin Baroncea
Foto: Radu Malașincu, Cristina Ginara, Alexandru Ivanof

GEST: A laboratory that includes workshops of ceramic ‘confections’, lighting appliances, furniture made of recycled materials and pieces, cartoons on the walls, and a boiler on the ceiling.