Text: Ștefan Ghenciulescu
Photo: Cosmin Pojoranu

I confess that this editorial was initially supposed to be about Ukraine. Obviously, whether we speak of architecture or any other part of culture, we have no right to just go on with our activity and concerns and ignore the terrible tragedy close to us.

There are few CLT (Cross-Laminated Timber) buildings in Romania. There are even fewer quality architecture buildings made of this material. Therefore, the emergence of this small office centre close to Oradea is even more important. It is the first building in Romania to achieve the “Low Energy Passive House” standard, but more than that, it’s a complex and poetic work. Its creation was possible precisely due to an exemplary involvement of the client and to their collaboration with the architects, and a multidisciplinary engineering team. We talked about all these, but also about ecology, money, spaces, architectural expression, landscape, with architects Gabriel Chiș-Bulea and Mădălina Mihălceanu, and with Marius Șoflete, founder of the Inginerie Creativă office. (Ștefan Ghenciulescu)

From some points of view, this house is close to a student project – that is, when you imagine a plucky and smart student project, without an actual customer, but in a very real context, which really needs to be done, and which needs to be done well.

Bad Habits was launched in 2021 as a specialty coffee shop located in the center of Craiova, in the oldest mixed residential and commercial building in the city.

Mira House & Claudia House give us the opportunity to analyse two almost neighbouring houses, located in the same district of the Valencian town of Benimaclet and built in the same period.

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.