ANDREI ŞERBESCU, ADNBA.
ADNBA was established in 2003 by architects Andrei Şerbescu, Adrian Untaru and Bogdan Săileanu (who left the office in 2005), and in 2009 Bogdan Brădăţeanu also became an associate. The project for extending the National Arts University won the first prize in the 2008 national solution contest.

FUNCTIONAL EXTENSION AND REMODELING
HEADQUARTERS OF BUCHAREST NATIONAL ARTS UNIVERSITY,
19 GENERAL BUDIŞTEANU STREET
Architecture contest

The National Arts University is one of the traditional education institutions of the capital, an important landmark with a remarkable history; it is spatially distributed among several headquarters in the central area and is part of an urban network of very high complexity. In this stratified, rich and complicated context, the study of the place and vicinity was essential and its conclusions subsequently determined our solution.

The evolution of the site is characterized by gradual densification, reached by completion, extension, overlapping, pasting, intersection, reuse, inclusion, merging and, more rarely, by demolition. This type of growth by addition generated a different kind of spaces, which grow organically and are physically and visually interweaved by means of overlaps and transparency. It is a specific typomorphology, with a wide variety of intermediate spaces, each a particular situation in which the difficult conditions of the site are brought to fruition and the specific parameters of a certain period are materialized. Our proposal follows this line of growth; it is a different moment of the same evolution where closure and overlapping do not exclude permeability and intense interior life. The proposed buildings cannot exist without the other objects of the site and the space which connects them. The organic evolution of the built matter generates simultaneity, ambiguity and interdependence relations among the different objects that were added over the years.

This fragile and complicated urban construction, which is mainly significant from an everyday perspective, calls for a different type of perception. The approach and, implicitly, the appropriation manner starts not so much from the visual aspect, but mostly from the intuitive, tactile, auditory, olfactory aspects, by means of a different sensory contact, a synaesthetic one, more intimate, more sensitive and more fertile.

Orientation is protected by the other senses. The architecture is appreciated by walking, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting, intuiting. The ambivalent perception generates countless meanings, the first stratum, the sensory one, usually being the most fertile.

The values already accumulated in the substance of the site become even more precious if they are only suggested and not fully presented. Relying on search and the joy of finding, the significant core becomes more powerful and individual perceptions, more subtle. Closeness, intimacy, emotion depend on details, human scale, unusual corners, cornices and the air mass modeled by surfaces, the new frames that are built, trees, birds and the sky.



ADRIANA MEREUŢĂ

In 2007 I was a member of a public arts organization. In the spring of the same year I met the co-founders of Bucharest Biennial Exhibition, who were looking for spaces which were to be used for the parallel events within the 2008 biennial exhibition.
In 2008, they told me about this space that one of the sponsors of the biennial exhibition – a private partner of the Pavilion – had made available to them. The location – Victoriei Square – is very important and powerful and serves exclusively the socio-political discourse from the cultural standpoint of the Pavilion.



I have worked on a space which functioned – when it was taken over by the Pavilion – as a bank headquarters, on the ground floor of a communist apartment block and I had to respond, in turn, to the concept of the Pavilion as an independent space for research and visual production and to functional necessities.
To begin with, the first physical initiative was to relax the communist structure, which was achieved by means of formal simplicity and cleanliness.

The concept and intention were to cut up into the vertical of the continuous domestic space and detach some volumes, without sticking out of the façade.
The monochrome look was meant to ensure the physical and social transition between a “controlled” structure of reality and the vaster, more abstract, therefore stripped to its essential elements, structure of the artistic phenomena which were going to take place in the Pavilion.







The multiple-function space – performance, presentation or lecture – gathers around a central volume, also called Resource room, whose extra function is to host “non-archives”. Across the room from the entrance is the office area, together with the other annex spaces which are needed for the proper functioning. The context in which I have operated is identified by the persistence of the apparent ceiling, bearing witness to the construction period – newspapers and formwork forgotten in the floor.
I must mention the fact that the initial plan I conceived included 2 mobile elements – the walls and the furniture. The fact that they can still be allowed in the space is the chance and potential of the Pavilion and the idea of design as process.







AbruptArhitectura is an architecture studio established in 2007 by Cristina Constantin and Cosmin Pavel.
AbruptArhitectura has a discourse focused on the domestic topos, on the familiar environment in a built space.
AbruptArhitectura tries to eliminate the dictatorship of architectural clichés, promoting the spontaneous manifestation of sites, people and words.

Ghetar Community Center - Garda de sus, Alba
architecture contest- 1st  place

The proposal amends from the start the use of a unique volume placed on the site which would contradict through its oppressive presence the domestic character and the scarcity typical of the local residential areas.
Our option targets the image and the scale of a community of parts which by dislocation and spreading should be able to match the logic of the human presence in the territory.

The community center is not so much a building as rather a community in itself, which copies the structure of a residential area.
This image transition – house- yard- small village matches the structural principle underlying the identification phenomenon.
Any form of dwelling is impregnated with the most prominent features of the site where it is located, and in turn the site lends it its specific characteristics, making it unique in appearance by matching a pre-existing model.



The four bodies that make up the assembly are held together in a sort of courtyard by the firm enclosing of the stone fence, which generates a moving and unexpected external space with wide areas and passages.

The prominent amplitude of the covers of the local buildings was the main architectural posture item and visual landmark transferred to the proposed project.
The four "hats" covering various areas in terms of development and functions have plastic value and reinvent themselves as part of the general discourse.



Their clearly upward tendency is emphasized by the use of « raised skies »,
the hall, the largest part of the building is dissimulated on the outside by being divided in two parts matching two of the "hats", articulated by a flat passage.

The hall space, which extends on the entire height of the roof, escapes through these "light holes". Impregnated with a celestial dimension, it is the hub, the center where the community life concentrates.
The height under the hat of the large hall can be accessed through a series of foot bridges and platforms located at various levels, which communicate with the external area of the elevated courtyard.



The materiality of the building is simple and strict.   The roof and the wall are unique, a coat that covers the entire building in scaled oak poling boards slightly burnt.



5 garages = 1 house
House made of 5 “granite” pre-stressed concrete garages



A system-built anonymous product is no longer used for its initial function, being reinvested with a human vocation. The generic garage made of pre-stressed concrete is ennobled, being transformed from a object which contains into an object which shelters.

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