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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.

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

Svante Myrick is 27 years old and he has been for three years the Mayor of Ithaca , New York. He sold his car and speaks enthusiastically about the dense city, accesible on foot. He also balanced the budget, brought investors and cut down taxes, and his city recorded the highest job‑growth rate in the state.

There is a kind of bias rooted around here, including among many architects: that if you pay a little more attention to ecology, public transport and bicycles you suddenly are against development, old fashioned, romantic, idealistic, utopian and so on. Of course, this is due to some passionate and occasionally naive standpoints, and also because criticism is still not accompanied by alternative proposals.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc

The Romanian audience knows Prince Charles thanks to the recent media news, as a defender of heritage and traditional practices, yet he is actually less known for his critic and often beligerant discourse against modern architecture. The Architectural Review, a prestigious British publication, asked Prince Charles to provide an editorial contribution last December about his vision on the future of cities.

An exhibition that opened simultaneously in Bucharest, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Bergen:

• Bucharest (Romania) – National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC (www.mnac.ro) / FB event
• Amsterdam (Netherlands) – New Energy Docks (www.newenergydocks.nl) / FB event
• Bergen (Norway) – City Hall of Bergen (www.bergen.kommune.no) / FB event
• Stockholm (Sweden) – Fargfabriken (www.fargfabriken.se) / FB event

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

Ask anyone, any intellectual (or even an architect, for the matter), what is more environmentally friendly – a house or a block of flats? – and for most of them the answer will be the house. In fact, it is not. I am not referring to individual examples, but to houses in general: the individual home today fatally involves a periphery location, which means occupying natural land, waste of resources – with less efficient infrastructure for transport and facilities etc., longer commutes – so  more pollution. Plus a bad ratio between usable square feet and the envelope and many other issues.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc

A big heavy topic for Expo Milano 2015: “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life”. Its subdivisions have keywords such as tradition, creativity, innovation, technology, education, health, in reference to world food production and distribution; these might sound pompous and somewhat inert compared to the actual modest situation of a polluted planet, with many hungry mouths, troubled by conflicts and anxiety, and squandering, often irresponsible mankind.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc

I do not know whether it is good to venture so much as to say that the best architecture and city planning books have not been written by architects or city planners. I am not sure whether the best pamphlet that has been written (so for) on the concept of smart city is not Against the Smart City, by a non-architect like Adam Greenfield.

Text: Stefan Ghenciulescu

Recent public architecture operations in Romania make me mad. For example, the project for the protection of the Roman ruins in the historic city of Alba Iulia is a revolting shack, with the roof shaped as an open book. It’s tenth rate architecture, but obviously living up to the expectations of the City Hall. This project stands out by its ridiculousness, but it actually expresses a process which is ongoing, despite the crisis: grand public operations made without a competition, without public consultation, without even a debate about the program or the relationship with the city; good intentions, I am sure, but a lot of missed opportunities.

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu / Photo : Cătălin Georgescu

Research and illustrations: Ioana Lupașcu

The problem with Roșia Montana (the place in Transylvania, the controversial cyanide mining project and the fight against it) is not the focus of this article; instead, we will talk about the marches that have been held in Bucharest for the last three months. Apart from the subject itself, I believe these actions were seminal in terms of using and perceiving the city.

Text: Cosmin Caciuc
Photo: Atelier Fabrik

I was reading a funny story: “A game that began with paper planes has received financing worth half a million dollars”. The project in question is called Power Up 3.0, developed by Shai Goitein and the TobyRich company, and it was financed with great enthusiasm by means of the Kickstarter platform: a smartphone app that can control any paper plane from a distance with the help of a tiny electromechanical device.