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Stories from Bucharest-South #4: Berceni

Text: Mihai Duțescu
Photo: Andrei Mărgulescu

As I know two absolutely OK and smart people who worked for some years at the Al. Obregia Clinical Psychiatric Hospital – the renowned “loony bin” in Berceni – two doctors, a psychiatrist and a neurologist, and as both have agreed to talk to me, I have done this double interview with them. It is primarily about the hospital, which is one of the landmarks of Berceni, but also about life in the neighborhood in general, about how all these things are seen from a rushing subway train, between two shifts.

An Unsettled Battlefield. Public art and the „Expanded Space” programme

Text: Judit Balko
Foto: Mihai Balko, Tiberiu Mihail Cimpoeru, Radu Boeru, Gabriel Boldiș

The term of public art, as it has been developing in the Western world since the 60s, is an umbrella term covering varied artistic approaches, ranging from actions of a permanent character to ephemeral ones, from statuary sculpture to performance, or actions featuring sound and participatory projects focused on developing a collaborative relation between the members of a group or a community.

The Entrepreneurs Café

Friday October 20th, 20:00 – 01:00 – Opening party and guided tours through the new materials library MATER. DJ Party with Vinyl, Rum, Tapas & Wine (free entrance)

 Saturday October 21st, 11:00 – 20:00 – The Entrepreneurs Cafe

@ MATER Library space – Splaiul Unirii 160, Industria Bumbacului complex, Bucharest (free entrance)

+ Food trucks, drinks and a lot of coffee

Roşia Montană, Again. About acting there.

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: A.R.A. – Arhitectură. Restaurare. Arheologie, Vlad Petri, Cătălin Georgescu, Ștefan Bâlici

There’s a rage now, as our governing bodies give increasingly more numerous and learer signals that there’s a wish to resume, in one form or another, the ecologically, socially and architectural disastrous mining project in Roșia Montană. And some others, less talked about. We revolt (rather passively and in small num­bers, it’s true), but we are responsible, also.

PUCK – Fika Talks 2: Power through design, with Torsten Hild & Birgitta Notlöf

September 28, 18:30 – 21:30 @ Sala Dalles – Bd. Nicolae Bălcescu 18, Bucharest

The second series of Fika Talks* brings us face to face with Swedish design, with the help of our guests Torsten Hild and Birgitta Notlöf. A meeting with two of the most representative practices for today’s democracy through design and education, through sustainability and responsibility.

PUCK workshop – new adventures. Pop-up creative kit for kids and parents

September 23 & 24 @ Casa AIA – Str. Institutul Medico Militar nr 22, București

creative upcycling workshop & reverse design

For the kids, we have a model workshop with and about the streets and public spaces of the future. The patterns that children will invent and assemble will spark their imagination with questions about how the world we know today will look like over 50 years

PUCK – pop up creative kit / Creative Sweden #4

Opening: September 12, 2017, 18:30h @ MNAC – Dalles Hall – Bd. Nicolae Balcescu nr.18, Bucharest

JAN RYDEN (Sweden) / The Right to the City/ lecture and intervention
ZEPPELIN / urban object DNA extract
TRSC / sofica
MODULAB / robot draws

Which is the most beautiful city in your world?

MortAlive Project. Bringing Ice Stupas from the Himalayas into the Swiss Alps

Place: Oberengadin/Graubünden/Switzerland
Interview: Ovidiu Serghe

Water management through architecture: in this exciting low-tech, high innovation project, India’s region of Ladakh and Switzerland’s Obergadin learn from each other how to answer the questions of freshwater availability on dry lands and of the rapid shrinkage of mountain glaciers.

Mobile Biennale 2017. The Tour of Moldavia in 7 days

Authors of the project: Adrian Bojenoiu, Alexandru Niculescu

The Centre for contemporary art Club Electroputere launches the edition 2017 of the Mobile Biennale (TM7D).

Edito: Saving the crabs on my plate

Text, photo: Mugur Grosu

A story told by Witold Gombrowicz pops into my mind occasionally: if you see a crab overturned on the beach, shaking its legs, unable to turn by itself, you will probably feel sorry that it might die if you left it like that, you will bend and you will put on back on its feet. But what if you noticed then that the beach is in fact full of crabs overturned by the storm, what do you think you might do? How many times will you bend, and how many will you try to save on the endless beach, until you will tell yourself that it is not your job, after all?

Salt Road. Landscaping in Sovata spa resort

Text, foto: Vallum

“The salt road from Sovata” project confronted us with a major problem: how to arrange the visiting infrastructure for hundreds, even thousands of tourists in a nearly untouched reservation of 70 hectares, located in the centre of the spa town.

Houses without faces and faces without houses. Or how to destroy a heritage and keep people happy

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Tudor Prisăcariu, Ștefan Tuchilă, Ștefan Ghenciulescu

It all looks like a movie set gone crazy. You walk down the streets and alien constructions emerge behind some walls with cherubs and capitals. Or, conversely, familiar buildings seem to have undergone very bad plastic surgery, that shaved off layers of their skin and have irretrievably damaged their faces.