Dorin Ştefan was the guest of Zeppelin 14th edition of 7 Mai 2009. A „young” architect who every time surprises his audience with innovative ideas and daring conceptual experiments although he has 30 years of experience in the field and works at more and more complex projects involving great urban stakes.

Tireless in searching interesting ideas and intelligent solutions, he certainly deserves this appellation due to his remarkable attitude on paying attention to everything that happens nowadays preferring to take all risks instead of safely following some comfortable or conventional paths. The seven projects presented located on various sites in Bucharest cover an intervention range of a maximum width that varies from a house fit up to sky scrapers and “urban social reactors”, fumbling the space of ideas along with that of the town, negotiating with customers or the authorities for a long time. Discussions about architecture synchronism, subversion and fashion, the way in which conceptual arts serve as a source of inspiration to our profession or about changing commercial programs have caught audience’s attention and invariably stirred up controversy.

The first two projects approach the issue of horizontal and vertical following the reason of folding the surfaces or the idea of manipulation and signification multiplicity. Fed by fashionable theoretical notions currently expressed on the global professional stage, they oppose those approaches attempting at looking “neutral” and “not bothering anybody”.





1. Urban reconfiguration of Charles de Gaulle Square (2007–2008)
The proposition of rearranging Charles de Gaulle Square – the first project that was presented – started from the necessity to solve roadway and pedestrian local traffic issues through rethinking general access and flows. The most important achievement of the crossroad rehabilitation consists in having laid out the two-level underground parking for 800 cars under the green central disc of the circus marked by Paul Neagu’s (“Cross of South”) sculpture together with the sketched underground roadway passage (currently uncertain in terms of investment, though). The sculpture shall be rearranged on the re-systematized surface of the circus that in the new project shall feature an artificial relief obtained by joining some parallel strips having an aleatory corrugated surface with level differences up to a three-meter height. One of the more pragmatic reasons relating to this relief landscape modeling comes from the idea that road traffic speed should be reduced by a visual blocking of the axial avenue perspective and a progressive approach of the roundabout. The underground station perpendicularly crosses the direction of the lanes sequentially covered by differently colored acclimatized herb species connecting to the public area and commercial spaces lying around the lightened courts above that are formed between the folders of this new relief.





2. Proposition to rebuild the façade of the National Library (2008)
The second project, a proposition to rebuild the façade of one of the representative buildings of the communist era – the National Library – unaccomplished and currently in ruins raised, first of all, the ethical question of an intervention attitude towards an object that is under controversy. The team led by Dorin Ştefan did not consider that strictly following the initial project of the historical pastiche building or removing the existing classical wrapping followed by its replacement with another modernist and conventional one represented some valid alternatives from this standpoint. Consequently, a new solution was adopted starting from critically assuming an inheritance dating from Ceasescu’s era. More precisely, the starting point leaned upon the conceptual work of the Bulgarian-origin Christo artist well-known for having “wrapped” some public monuments like the Reichstag in Berlin or Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and for the way in which as an emigrant coming from the Eastern Europe communist world he had appropriated through his art, in a critical manner, the world of western objects by changing their significance. The glass curtain proposed in our case (silkscreen printed with texts supporting the idea of ideological dissimulation and lined with “vegetal strips”) does not actually „disguise” the library. It tightly fits, via triangulation, the existing shape like an air-filled skin allowing noticing behind it the former façade while altering shapes and changing its original meaning. The gesture involves here a double play of meanings and shapes, the oscillation between rejection and acceptance via code transparency and stratification, by duplication and ambiguity. The fear of assuming such a gesture on behalf of the authorities and negative criticisms on media side proved a simplistic view over the project coming to the attack of the non-conventional shape and completely evading the conceptual value of the gesture with obvious political connotations.

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The next three projects approach the sensitive issue of compact urban development including high altitudes. Dorin Ştefan thinks that the image of a contemporary metropolis should not be blocked by narrow old-fashioned visions originating in “small houses that do not trouble anybody”. He emphasizes that high office towers are the effects of a free market and real estate pressure since 40 to 60% of the labor force of a society is engaged in activities that need office-type compression in city compact centers. Architects should not avoid, therefore, assuming an urban vision of compression provided that they join some policies to intelligent attitudes that never ignore the public space.





3. Euro Tower – office building (2006 – 2009)
The new office building proposed at the crossroad of Barbu Văcărescu Boulevard and Lacul Tei Boulevard on a difficult site including a powerful urban exposure that is currently under execution, represents an example in respect of assuming a compact development with a strong visual effect at an urban scale. The main source of an architecture conflict lies in the nearby eight-store condominium whose view over the crossroad would have been aggressively blocked by the office volumetry. The fact of rejecting the urbanism approval of the project originally and ineptly drafted by another architecture office determined the real estate developers to ask DSBA team to find a convenient solution for the conflict between the new 40 to 50 m building and the existing condominium. The idea of receding the new tower to a distance of 20m from the condominium and a volumetric modeling via cutting and intelligent extrusion allowed proximities on one hand, to coexist in terms of visual relationships (inhabitants view over the crossroad) and on the other hand, to make a compromise at the level of the built area, the volumes moved for urban reasons having been relocated in a cantilever where the site and the structure allowed this architecture manipulation. The envelope surface and its transparency made the object of a further study, the curtain wall finally acquiring diagonal breakings of the flatness with small differences (30 to 40 cm) and nuances in terms of material and building details through insertion of some materials including more domestic textures like plaster or synthetic wood aiming at getting more accurate contextual joints.





4. Urban graft – a Hotel (2009)
The project of a luxury hotel in the area of Calea Dorobanţilor –Eminescu street – General Broşteanu street had violently drawn the attention of both public opinion and the media due to a controversial proposition made by the prestigious office headed by Zaha Hadid. According to the developers’ idea the hotel actually shelters a multipurpose compound consisting of casinos, lodgings and commercial areas. In the British office’s vision, this program took the shape of a 200-m tower (the highest building in Bucharest so far) covering a built area of 100,000 sq m located on a 5,000 sq m land (thus resulting a land usage ratio amounting to 20) in a setting where there are three protected areas with a maximum 8 to 9 floor-height limitation. Another proposition was coming from an Israeli office (developers originating in Israel as well) and consisted of a 10 to 11 floor extended volume. Unlike these two projects that included demolition of buildings existing on the land, DSBA office agreed to making a counter proposition starting from a contextual premise of preserving the existing houses and developing an architectural agglomeration able to produce a long-term feasible and interesting public space (mainly in terms of urban historical protection). It was even suggested to make a pedestrian square by compressing the yard of Broşteanu Church and some closer plots. However, in the end the proposition more realistically got restricted to the plot effectively selected for the intervention. From an architectural standpoint, the compound was devised like an agglomeration of prismatic modular volumes developed in an “organic” or “scattered” way similar to a heap, both horizontally and vertically, erected from the land level and cantilever suspended to allow a “cavernous” public space underneath.





5. Collective lodging in Eminescu Street (2006 – 2009)
The urban area from Eminescu Street, nearby the park dominated by Tudor Vladimirescu statue, on a land including a neo-Romanian style house in decline, represents another case Dorin Ştefan wished to point out as a negative example of “preserved” maintenance at a low-height condition, quite old-fashioned as compared to the idea of changing the urban paradigm of vertical development to at least 4 to 6 floor condition (characteristic to all European cities), equally initiated via Bucharest interwar regulations. A compact development does not necessarily mean demolition of existing low houses. However, further to a number of explorations that takes into account the idea of demolition, this project comes back to the solution of preserving the existing villa and integrate it into the new eight-floor building volumetry. Other references to the existing split background added gradually like those relating to the facades of the various style buildings in the area and even to interwar modern architecture inspired by the Mediterranean vernacular shapes based on the fact that architect Henrietta Delavrancea-Gibory (a representative figure for this regional approach) lived nearby. The idea resulted from conceptual arts and theoretical discourse of Droog Design group who refers to the dialectics between perfection and imperfection in terms of producing an artistic, design or architecture object. At a final stage, the apartment building gathers in its volumetric mould the apartments typologically differentiated (similar to drawers belonging to various pieces of furniture), defined by aleatory perforations in the envelope and contrasting materials set out in a sort of patchwork and tied („wrapped” would sound better) with a Moebius compositionally unifying strip (as a stylistic element expressing an aesthetic „synchronism”). Dorin Ştefan acknowledges that this is an experimental work and on the execution side it is quite risky since it is far from clearing away worries associated with its material nature and the effort to dramatically adjoin accurate techniques of implementation to „imprecise” or hesitant ones. Similar to other projects, the public space is not ignored. The layout of the land nearby the ground floor involves a straight reference to the landscape intervention in the park, which is under development as well.

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The last two projects presented, a church and an interior lodging layout in spite of the differences in terms of architectural program and semantic scope offer a strong example of the conceptual interest on a theoretical approach capable of keeping a steady level from the preliminary stages of the project up to the execution details. Thinking and making are not even for a single moment in opposition in these two cases.





6. Orthodox Church in Alba Iulia (2008)
Making reference to facilities made by artist Vlad Nancă in the contest for Catedrala Neamului (Nation’s Cathedral), Dorin Ştefan agreed to design an Orthodox church provided that the church leaders would accept a contemporary architecture image thus avoiding an anachronous recycling of a historical architecture style (neo-Romanian or Byzantine). Therefore, no more being an exercise of historicist and populist style, the church turned into a simple “resonance box” starting from a rectangular plan on the ground (as a reference to the Roman basilica typology that hosted this program two millenniums ago) and gradually transforming along the vertical section to a cross-like plan. There are no domes on the roof, yet a progressive modulation of the section emphasizes and stresses the crossed plan and the “vault” in the intersection extending far out the envelope and spatially defining the church porch and the access to the structure. The church leaders have accepted the project which is currently under execution. The building manner draws attention due to the metallic structure of the roof and the steel pillars (part of BAR wall system) since they are the first assembled sections on site, in a non-convention sequence. The two parallel-layer brick laying (required to obtain the support plaster of the outer painting) shall be carried out, subsequently. It shall also serve as casing for the concrete cover which shall work together with metallic pillars in a same structural “core”.





7. Re-design – interior layout (1996 – 2008)
The idea of redesigning a part of an unfinished 1996 house including a U courtyard open on one side was born further to the owner’s wish to extend the serviceable surface of the lodging and change the initial project by closing the yard and turning it into an inside atrium. The inner courtyard covering started when the site was not yet completed surprising different “breakings” in the initial envelope kept in the project of the new intervention to bring light under various unexpected manners into the inner gap of the atrium. The source of inspiration for the approach of this intervention having a strong scenographic nature originates in one author’s private memory captured in the picture of a flour mill showing white inner wooden surfaces further to a gradual deposit of the white dust. Contrasting materials like glass and stainless steel used for staircases, banisters and even a 5 m long suspended foot bridge (made of stuck glass) are contrastingly adjoined to the white plastered surfaces and the wooden ones dyed either in white with emphasized or apparent veneer. The exposed objects look like floating in this surrealistic space along with the footbridge, perimetrical fluencies, platforms and cable suspended staircases combining with the light sharply reflected by shiny textures or discreetly iridized by matte ones.

Organizers: Zeppelin, Arhitectura magazine, KLUDIstudio
Sponsor: KLUDI
Event supporter: DULUX
Partner: Cărtureşti