Dossier coordinators: Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Cătălina Frâncu

Intro

A first split into categories for this file sounds a bit like an index of materials – recomposed wood, glass and polycarbonate, metal, concrete, special textiles, and of technologies – 3D moulds, lamination, gas and heat recovery, smart buildings

This plan really moved us. Not only because it is novel (at least, we could not find it elsewhere), but also because the drawing does not belong to Horia Creangă[1], the Modernist hero of romanian architecture, but it traces the house of his grandfather, Ion Creangă – the hero of romanian literature.

An L shaped house with hidden pockets and green perspectives – extroverted, transparent, it opens itself to nature: from the courtyard, an exhibition of spaces, solid and void among which one may feel like hiding; from the street an elegant object, quite different from its built context, whose effervescence often generates a stop, inviting people to interact with it (neighbors told us).

This is one of the most coveted areas in Bucharest: north from the central ring, there is a chain of the perfectly structured luxurious garden-neighbourhoods, with the beautiful villas and blocks of flats of the interwar elite.

A precious place

… and a complicated one. Around the Calea Victoriei area, between the Revoluției Square and the Elisabeta Boulevard, most historical streets are overlapping, from the sinuous, typically Balkan route of Calea Victoriei and the wonderful Kretzulescu church, to the eclecticism of late 19th-century public buildings and houses and then to the flamboyant Neo-Romanian and the Modernist Art-Deco elegance of the 1930s. The post-war period gave us, first and foremost, the Palace Hall and Square complex, an urban operation which entailed significant destructions and difficult relationships with the urban fabric beyond it, but holding genuine urban and architectural qualities.

The project makes it possible to completely renew the site, and on a more global level, to think about collective housing and the environmental approach to it. Both employed on this plot to create a new urban pattern that may generate of good quality and sustainable development.

ASTRA VR is a museum project which uses VR technology, sound installations, and cartoons to make traditional culture heritage much more accessible. ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization undertook to innovate its means of expression and to come closer to a new generation of visitors.

Introduction

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

As you probably know, the “Roșia Montană” natural and cultural site was included on this year’s UNESCO’s World Heritage list. This is, of course, a tremendous joy, the result of fierce battle which was fought, in varying proportions, by hundreds of thousands.
But this is not what I want to talk about here, but about what I learned, while reading this year’s list and then a few from the past few years.

Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu

Twenty years ago, I officially started my work in this magazine’s management team. Well, it had a different name back then, and had a different status, but it was still an independent publication. When I say management team, I burst a bit into laughing, because that team was also the editorial team, and even the design one. Up to 2004, it was the same three people – Cosmina Goagea, Constantin Goagea and myself, who would also take care of marketing (that is, advertisement money), and the backpack distribution.

The conservation project for the cemetery church of Ursi Village, Vâlcea County, Romania, represents an exemplary case study (rural acupuncture practice) for a specific larger group of wooden churches included in this 60 Wooden Churches programme, designed in 2009 and coordinated by the Pro Patrimonio Foundation.

The “Wohnregal”( “Dwelling shelf)” is a 6-story building in Berlin housing ateliers with integratd dwelling.

Text: FAR
Photography: David von Becker, Tobias Wootton

We are living in post-Communism in Romania, that is, in a country still defining itself by its relationship to its Communist past. After a long tradition of invented mythologies and counterfeit identities, we are searching for real history. In order for it to exist, we need witnesses and memories to acknowledge, even when shameful. And this is where the museum steps in, with its possible role of mediator, of negotiator in this process of understanding and learning, and, perhaps, ultimately, of healing memories that hurt.