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Text & photo: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

This article is not about the already famous gigantic cross with twinkling lights proposed for University Sq as a monument to the 1989 Revolution; it is only the latest in a series of authoritarian and pompous actions that have been rained upon us from various city administrations in the past years. Impaled potatoes, grotesque busts, monstrous princes, cumbersome allegories…

Beyond the lack of artistic culture of the commissioners and the fact that they waive any advice or public consultation, the problem seems to be the need for bombastic: in order to remember or simply to honor something good and beautiful, you must exaggerate, look for grandeur, size, magnitude and maximum visibility. They must be seen, literally jump at you. Otherwise, the monument doesn’t work, it seems.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc

In this issue we are publishing a dossier with projects rewarded at the European Award for Architectural Heritage Intervention AADIPA. These biennial awards organized with Catalan support occurred in the professional continental landscape only recently, in 2013. Unlike other famous European awards, such as those dedicated to the Eu Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards (from 2002, focusing on heritage conservation), The European Prize for Urban Public Space (from 1999, focusing on new urban interventions) and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award (1998, for new architectural projects) AADIPA awards deal with a niche mediating between heritage and contemporary examples. It is an important signal of the need to reconcile social attitudes divided between history and modernization, of the strategic importance for the development of urban heritage, providing even a guide of best practices in protected areas, where integration and coexistence are fundamental keys to awareness and understanding.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc / Photo: Cosmin Dragomir (Boldești-Scăeni)

In this issue we present some examples of good ecological thinking, that I would label as high green, due to their coherent, mature, integrated, financially prudent vision, and responsible, in a broad sense, for the future of the built environment: the education centre of Boldești‑Scăeni (Adrian Pop – Center for Sustainability in the Built Environment), a dossier of the 4th edition of Holcim Awards for sustainable construction, and VTree, a prototype of an urban autonomous mobile power generator from this year’s festival Street Delivery, in Bucharest, by Studio Act.

Between July 24th – August 1st an industrial heritage workshop will take place in Anina in the framework of the “Anina Mine of Ideas: Post-Industrial Cultural Identity” project initiated by Alba Verde Association in partnership with Anina Town hall, the Architects’ Chamber of Romania in Timiș, the Faculty of Architcture and Urbanism from Timișoara, and supported by The National Architects’ Chamber of Romania.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc / Photo: Daisuke Ohki

From Jules Verne’s novels I reckon that it’s not cool to be a scientist without being eccentric and particularly controversial, or at least declarative. Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence director at Google, occupied by predictions of the future and by the 100 pills that he claims he’s taking daily to live longer, is no exception to this rule. His vision, in short: all roads lead to nanotechnology, that is, manipulated matter at atom level, so that natural and artificial boundaries can be dissolved, even in human tissue.

• Str. Dr. Constantin Istrati no. 1, Bucharest (opposite of Bus station Filaret, next to Park Carol)
• Saturday, 6 of june, from 9:30 P.M.
• Gates open at 7 P.M.

The first Saturday of this summer comes full of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish movies – a rare opportunity to enjoy the Scandinavian cinema at Carol Factory (Halele Carol), but also to celebrate the national day of one of the invited friends, Sweden: on June 6th, just after sunset, the lights of the northern cinema arrive in southern Bucharest, in the former factory next to Carol Park, continuing our program of activating the old site.

creativity workshops for children

6 & 7 June 2015

Children had the opportunity to turn detective and architect and to shape the stories that we tell them or they create themselves.  We worked with photographs, drawings, objects, models and stories that animate children.

Exhibition and conference – Friday 22 May 2015

•  18:00 – Opening: 5 installations -interventions in the public space of Halele Carol, realized by artists and architects from Norway and Romania

Curators:  Evy Sorensen (USF) , Cosmina Goagea and Ştefan Ghenciulescu (Zeppelin)

• 19:00 – Conference with presentations by the authors on their design of the site-specific intervention in the context of their work practice.

Marit Haugen (No)
Erlend Blakstad Haffner (No)
Finn Eirik Modahl & Arne Revheim (No)
Meta van Drunen (Ro)
Constantin Goagea (Ro)

Exhibition open five months from 22 May – 30 October 2015

Conference:  24.03.2015, 09:00-18:00 @ Hotel Crowne Plaza Bucharest, Romania

The German-Romanian Chamber of Commerce and Zeppelin Association invite you to the third edition of Cities of Tomorrow, Romania’s top meeting between business, architecture and administration.

This event shows an intense and rich mix of presentation, workshops and networking. Conferences by top international guests go side-by-side with debates on the Romanian situation and perspectives.

Cities of Tomorrow 2015 is dedicated to the relationship between mobility, urban development, economy and constructions.

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

The fountain in Bucharest University Square is not really a great artistic achievement. But it is a place, one of the very few focal points and hubs of life and identity in a city where genuine public spaces, used as such, are almost nonexistent. There′s also a huge symbolic and civic value in this spot. People died here during the Revolution of 1989 and during the conflicts with the miners (the so-called Mineriads), crowds still gather here for demonstrations, individuals come here on a daily basis, to discuss, to meet or simply to rest. Of course, those perimetral water jets installed by the City Hall from a few years ago, that drench you as soon as you sit, destroyed much of the quality of the place, but it dwelt on. It even resisted the initiative of the same City Hall to replace the fountain with a banal refurbishment.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc
Photo: Ștefan Tuchilă

Google Glass has been stirring up the media. However, it didn’t have the expected commercial success from a social and psychological reason: the fear of being watched when you don’t want to, plus the embarrassing moments when you ask your interlocutor with the cyborg device on his face: “Is that thing recording right now?” And we’ll just let slide the glasshole nickname attributed in urban dictionaries to these gadget carriers.

Text: Constantin Goagea
Photo: Silviu Dancu, Meta van Drunen

Hesper S.A.. is a factory in the southern part of the central area og Bucharest, formerly known as Wolf, then Steaua Roșie (Red Star) Factory. For over two years now, Zeppelin works, in partnership with Hesper, to a model of rehabilitation for these spectacular buildings built in 1887: two years of research right on the site, in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Russia about how such a place can be transformed, meetings and discussions, business plans, strategies and not as the least important, action.