Alexandru cozma portfolio2014

ALEX COZMA

A collection of activities

//RO În 2009, Alexandru Cozma devine architect diplomat dupa absolvirea Facultății de Arhitectură din Timișoara. Studenția a fost marcată de practicile facute în birourile Atelier 3 și Parasite Studio din Timișoara și Bjarke Ingels Group din Copenhaga, dar și de alte activități extra-curriculare cum ar fi Studentfest sau European Experiments și diverse concursuri individuale de arhitectură. Experiența astfel acumulată se concretizează în obținerea titlului de Studentul Anului și premiile 1 și 3 si la concursul Arhetipuri, ambele în 2009. Începand cu 2010, Alexandru Cozma este arhitect stagiar în cadrul biroului timișorean Atelier trei și membru fondator al platformei de creație F O R. F O R se hrănește cu efervescența concursurilor la care participă și cu responsabilitatea proiectelor voluntare.

Ascensiunea platformei a fost marcata de premiile de execelență în 2010 și 2011 la Anuala de Arhitectură Timișoara și participări notabile la concursuri naționale de arhitectură.

Câteva expoziții și conferințe, precum și coordonarea workshop-ului Arhitectura unei viziuni sunt alte evenimente notabile. În scurta sa existență, F O R a devenit un exemplu al folosirii arhitecturii parametrice întrun mod conștient și pragmatic precum și al fabricației digitale de machete și prototipuri. Pe de alta parte, abordarea platformei este una obiectivă, ancorată și inspirată din sit, modelată de informație și parametrii exteriori obiectului.

//EN In 2009, Alexandru Cozma becomes architect after graduating the Faculty of Architecture in Timisoara. His academic formation was influenced by the internships at Atelier 3 and Parasite Studio, both from Timisoara, and Bjarke Ingels Group from Copenhagen. Also important to his formation were the extracurricular activities – a series of individual competitions and workshops – such as Studentfest or European Experiments. His experience as a student was also acknowledged by the Student of the Year Title and winning both First and Third Prize in Arhetipuri competition, all in 2009.

From 2010, Alexandru is a junior architect at Atelier 3 and founding partner of the F O R creation platform. F O R draws its energy from the turmoil of always on-going competitions and the responsibility towards our voluntary projects. Recognition came with special prizes in 2010 and 2011, at The Architecture Annual in Timisoara, and notable presence in national competitions.

A series of exhibitions and lectures, and tutoring the Architecture of a Vision workshop in Cluj, are other notable references.

In its short existence, F O R became a good example of using parametric architecture in a pragmatic and responsible way. Digital fabrication of models and prototypes is also one of FOR’s current preocupations. On the other hand, our projects are anchored and inspired by their context, modeled by information and exterior parameters.

Project name: THE CENTRE. THE PATH. THE FIELD OF ACTION Type: Masterplan,Housing Date: 03-06.2013 Location: Kristinehamn, SE Size: Main office: F O R Colaborators: Participation: Project leader Awards: EUROPAN EUROPE- runner up prize

http://f-o-r.ro/-EUROPAN12

Our story is not the result of a complete set of actions We begin by sewing down the two river banks with with a delimited range of time and space, but rather a soft loop. The LOOP/RING/CIRCLE always holds a suggests a boundary, leaving room for the present to be promise within. It becomes a form of understanding continuously created in and out of time. context – it is a dynamic structure that explains the centre and evolution of Kristinehamn.

Using the landscape as a unified background we propose a demarcation that attributes a beginning To be in the loop is a complex process which and an end to the place. The project’s orientation and includes both the path/journey and the regions/ morphology refers to the existing landscapes, space, events that it crosses. By connecting different strategic structures and networks. Aware of what is already points in the city it assures a continuous flow of there, we densify existing textures and accentuate people and events. But being on this path does not through soft interventions the limits and character necessarily entail having a final destination – a closed of the site. We propose a dispositif of activation, with loop is an infinite tribute to time! minimal built structures, and a series of operative voids, places for action – where we left space for natural growth and development.

Project name: GREY HEIGHBOURHOOD REHABILITATION Type: Research, Masterplan,Housing Date: 03.2011 Location: Timișoara, RO Size: Main office: F O R Colaborators: Project leader: Oana Simionescu Participation: Project architect Awards: Excelence Price, A_TA National Anual architecture competition/exhibition, Timișoara, RO Urban inventor recognition, +/_Galați competition, Galați, RO

http://www.f-o-r.ro/-GREY

The city is like a puzzle – it gets its general image from a composition of different pieces.

When a significant part of these start to look the same and they form big spots on the image, they become a definition.

receive everything from the state, and to the instant disappearance of the social housing stock. Unfortunately, since then, there has been no coherent strategy to continue with a housing policy (be it the same or a different one) for the benefit of the many people who Romania’s socialist urbanization program has must share one apartment with their parents produced wast areas of gray neighborhoods and children, nor has there been any serious at the lowest quality in Europe. This program consideration of rehabilitation schemes has stopped suddenly in the 90’s, after covering by the local administration, politicians or up significant parts of cities, when all the even private companies. Romanians are flats were sold to their occupants. This has mostly pessimistic(53%) due to the poor lead to an owning rate of 97%, leaving the life conditions(74%) and lowest incomes responsibility of the low quality urban volumes in Europe. They don’t believe that one can on the shoulders of a population used to influence the administrative process(77%)

and volunteering is considered an urban caprice. Most Romanians(75%) believe that if the economy would work better they would have a better life, while 77% of them would like the state to offer them a job. Sustainable actions coming from public authorities are not happening yet in Romania. We strongly believe that there is an acute need for such projects though, and that there is a huge potential to use them to regain people’s trust in themselves and their feeling of belonging to an independent community.

GNR is a project that started from the collaboration with the inhabitants of such

a neighborhood in Timisoara, Romania. It presents a pilot-strategy that responds with context-conscious solutions to basic needs: a rehabilitation project for an urban structure in decay, a social project for the revival of community spirit, a sustainable project for the energy system, and an economic strategy that gives value to all the above.

The project stretches for a period of 30 years, starting with dialogue and competitions.

Stages are correlated so that the construction sites complete each other and the financial strategy can start functioning almost from the beginning. Courtyards becomes focus points

instead of the private flat. Each courtyard and the buildings around it will receive characteristic esthetics, atmosphere, function, and development tools. Communities will form around them. The neighborhood will become a network of such small communities that become then integrated into the neighborhood grid. All rehabilitation procedures are thought of so that they bring more space, less spending, income, jobs, education, social housing, diversity, spatial quality and the feeling of belonging.

VERSION C LEVEL 00

(cont) - PLANS

29415 sqm

LEVEL 01

± 0.0

6196 sqm

LEVEL 02

+ 2.5

LEVEL 05

14877 sqm

LEVEL 06

+ 14.5

11436 sqm

+ 5.5

13248 sqm

LEVEL 07

+ 17.5

LEVEL 03

15622 sqm

+ 8.5

11095 sqm

+ 20.5

LEVEL 04

15793 s

qm

5936 sq

m

+ 11.5

LEVEL 08

8591 sqm

+ 23.5

LEVEL 09 + 26.5

VERSION C FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE

M2 IX VIII VII VI V IV III II I

15309.52 14219.55 14384.57 13121.28 12945.07 18173.86 7646.44 10155.62 7386.59

TOTAL

LEVEL 10

3660 sqm

LEVEL 11

+ 29.5

2038 sqm

LEVEL 12

+ 32.5

+ 35.5

930 sqm

LEVEL 13

267 sqm

+ 38.5

25 -29

113342.5

VERSION C

Øresundspa

TyPOLOGICAL

(cont)

3000

33º

33º

8500

3000

33º

33º

3000

8500

33º

3000

8500

33º

3000

8500

8500

DIAGRAMATIC TOPOLOGICAL SECTION

22 -29

Project name: ØRESUNDPARKEN Type: Commission- Research, Masterplan, Housing Date: 2009 Location: Copenhagen, DK Size: 145000sqm Main office: Bjarke Ingels Group Colaborators: Project leader: Joao Albuquerque Participation: Intern- 3D modelling, presentation, model making Awards: -

Øresundsparken is an Urban Planning Design Competition won by BIG. It was comissioned posteriorly for further development. The initial Design was based on several Row Houses displayed along kinked lines setled on existing site conditions. These Row houses contained paralelepipedic volumes on top as additional Housing units.

My participation within this design was do develop those same upper volumes. Within a design presetted on Existing contitions and rules, the upper volumes followed the same principle.

They were originated parametrically, by obtaining an maximum envelop based on Danish Laws, which define, according to an equation, the maximum height of a building in relation to the proximity towards the neighbour buildings. As such, a maximum volume for each row was obtained. From that maximum volume, the process was driven throught the partial subtraction of the maximum volume, regulated with precision on the amount of area required by the Client.

These Typological variations obey both to the predefined Area Ratio and Maximum Volume (from the Maximized Plot Volume)

ION C

(cont)

MAXIMUM HEIGHT

- rule

h = a x 0,33 + 3m

4 -29

VERSION C FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE FASE

M2 IX VIII VII VI V IV III II I

15309.52 14219.55 14384.57 13121.28 12945.07 18173.86 7646.44 10155.62 7386.59

TOTAL

113342.5

33º

33º

8500

3000

33º

8500

3000

8500

33º

3000

8500

33º

3000

8500

33º

3000

DIAGRAMATIC TOPOLOGICAL SECTION

22 -29

VERSION C

VERSION C

(cont) - SHADOW RANGE ANALYSIS

(cont) - PROCESS

The Rule H=Ax0,33 +3m is here applyed both on the upper limit (height) and lower limit, introducing a new parameter. The row houses becomes fully optimised in this situation, taking advantage of maximum height and span (width), without jeopardizing the lower dwellings views nor light conditions.

VERSION C This Design has been approved by the townhall as Definitive Urban Planning , not withing conventional parameters defined bidimentionally, but as a maximum threedimensional envelope to be followed for further housing developments.

VERSION C

(cont) - PROCESS

(cont) - PROCESS

June Shadow Range

Summer Solistice

23 -29

Winter Solistice

23 -29

26 -29

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ZIRA ISLAND Masterplan commission 2009 Baku, AZE 1000000sqm Bjarke Ingels Group Ramboll, Pihl Bjarke Ingels Intern- 3D modelling, presentation, model making Awards: 2009 Cityscape Abu Dhabi -finalist

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Project leader: Participation:

http://big.dk/#projects-zir

The Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan is a master plan for a Zero Energy resort and entertainment city of Zira Island situated within the Caspian Sea. Located within the crescend shaped bay of Azerbaijan capital Baku, Zira Island is designed to be a sustainable model for urban development, and an iconographic skyline recognizable from the city s coastline.

As a young post-soviet democracy, Azerbaijan is rediscovering its national identity, The Seven Peaks of Azerbaijan proposes an architectural lanscape derived from its natural lanscape. The mountains are conceived not only as metaphors, but engineered as entire eco-systems, a model for future sustainable urban development.

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Project name: KAUF- Kauhauskanal Metrozone Type: Invited competition- masterplan, housing, public space Date: 2009 Location: Hamburg, DE Size: 11500sqm Main office: Bjarke Ingels Group Colaborators: Windels Architekten, Topotek 1, Grontmij Carl Bro, Wenzel+Wenzel Project leader: Ole Schroder Participation: Intern- 3D modelling, digital facade patterning, presentation, model making Awards: 1st Prize http://big.dk/#projects-kauf

The IBA Hamburg is abuilding exhibition which is running in Hamburg until 2013 and has its mission to develop solutions for the future of the metropolis. One in a long line of building exhibitions held throughout Germany which also included the 1927 Weisenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart which showed the latest developments in architecture and house construction. All building exhibitions to date have had one thing in common: they generated ideas on shaping the future of urban life.

In this tradition the Kaufhauskanal housing scheme provides 80 residential units, which

introduce living into this former industrial area of Hamburg. The typology for the oveall plan for the Kaufhauskanal Metrozone is designed of new Kaufhaus Hybrids. The scheme is meant to accomodate the existing quarter so that all the new building slopes downward and outward to meet the heights of the existing buildings. The roofs are angled and inclined to maximize views to the sky and at the same time minimize the noise from the surrounding streets, roads and ralway. Our proposal for the Kaufhauskanal provides a new framework to create an urban geography where the best elements from both the old and new areas will be incorporated.

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators:

HAUSWIESE Copetition- EUROPAN11 07.2011 Wien, AT 5200sqm FOR PARASITE STUDIO(parasitestudio.com)

Participation: Project leader, project architect Awards: -

http://www.f-o-r.ro/-EUROPAN11

A walk through Hietzing shows you not only the obvious wealth of its residents, but also a fascinating collection of mostly Biedermeier and Grunderzeit villas. The approximately 50,000 residents of the 13th district stand out from most statistics in Vienna: unusually high income, geriatric tendencies in terms of age, high education, low percentage of foreigners. If the Empire has survived, it now lives in Hietzing.

City gates used to work as meeting points – places where people met the city. The gates were supposed to represent the city’s qualities and power. Central stations took over this task, later on, as the train became more and more important. As the car and plane were developed, the concept grew even bigger and iconic transportation hubs were built. As traffic gets more and more crowded and overwhelming, so do the stations – a perpetual buzz of traffic.

Speising station is the ‘gate’ of Heitzing – the aristocratic, green district of Vienna. People either come here as tourists – looking forward for their outdoor adventures – or as residents – getting back to their posh homes. The station needs to represent their expectations about the neighbourhood.

As you approach Hietzing by train, a green, hilly meadow surrounds you – an announcement of the city’s greenest district and a reminder of it’s romantic past.

The building is a two faced-geography: a green one and a gray one. The green one is a central point and signal in the parks map of the neighbourhood, while the gray one is used to connect people and create new urban relationships.

Through a series of simple geometrical operations, the compact, low density urban tissue on the south is connected with the more spread-out mono block tissue on the north. As the main volume is forged, the train pushes down on it, creating the topographical image of the station, protecting the development from noise, while offering the neighbourhood a new spot of green. The pushed-down green is used as recreational landscape, urban amphitheatre and promenade, while the opposite sides of the development connect to the urban surroundings.

From the green meadow, passengers are guided out in the urban space by the shape of the building.

Out in the urban space, the building spreads out it’s ‘legs’ leaving rooms for squares of passing and social interaction.

Outside is as important and definitive as inside. What we proposed are not objects and an exterior reality, but continuity between forms that connect and disconnect, open and close, that focus and serve as focus. The building thus expands in reality, in a medium, in the environment.

A necklace of small squares is interlocked with the building’s legs. The squares open-up towards the outer limits of the site, linking the building to the surrounding urban context( views, paths, transport stations, traffic, parks, etc.), and closes towards the station. This offers each square a gradient of privacy, directs the traffic and improves light condition. Every square becomes a scene in an urban scenography designed to generate events and social interaction.

The housing blocks are higher where the squares are wider and lower in the opposite side. This offers, besides good lighting conditions and privacy, an interesting blend between the row house and the social housing typology – creating a gradient of scale.

At a more domestic level, the relationships between housing program, social groups and urban facilities is also orchestrated by the simple layout of the building.

The pragmatic, dry, pattern of the facade tries to regulate the specificity of every volume, while filling the spaces with light and directional views.

An architecture of overlapping surfaces: ‘lands over other lands’. Presences-absences posited through the paradoxical combination of densification and disappearance.

Rather than a partitioning of spaces or parcelling of uses, what is called for is an articulation of activities in a preferably free, fluid space only potentially nipped by hollows – mats – of services that reveal a concern for colonising the landscape – beyond the old distinctions between space able to be urbanised or not – through infiltration and distancing devices that would be bound no longer to strict geometric schemes but rather would be of a freer and more meaningful configuration.

Devices that act by inserting, densifying and preserving at the same time.

No longer lovely volumes under the light, but rather ambiguous landscapes under the sky.

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators:

WUNDERCARPET Open competition 10.2011 București, RO 9000sqm FOR OLGV(olgv.net), SYAA(syaa.ro)

Project leader: Oana Simionescu Participation: project architect- concept developAwards: ment, 3d modelling, presentation

http://f-o-r.ro/-UNIV

A wunderkammer, also known as a cabinet of curiosities or a wonder room, is a collection of objects meant to represent the world in miniature. The Kunstkammer was regarded as a miniature-universe, or theater of the world, and a memory theater. It conveyed symbolically the patron’s control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction. Besides the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe also formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Wunderkammer takes its name from the eclectic, encyclopedic collections of the old nobles which served as microcosms of a baffling world, demanding examination and inspiring curiosity from its viewers.

Just as those miniature museums, ‘Piala Universitatii’ is a place that collects within it’s history many layers of interventions, monuments, emotions, personalities

and events, all somehow connected to each other and to our trails in time, as Romanians, as inhabitants of Bucharest – ‘KM 0 of freedom’, ‘a sort of Mecca’.

Through thoughtful interventions, and negotiations between different times, the project is a dynamic witness of the age. The design consists in gradually assembling the site’s rich resources into a whole, tossing them like through a sieve so that their connections remain fluent, and continue the loop of time.

If we imagine the surfaces of a territory as the floors of certain great rooms, scattered with colorful carpets of diverse motifs, we might then also imagine, rolled over the urban space, possible architectures conceived as operative carpets.

A square might be conceived today as a large void ‘to be habilitated’ strategically marked out

with equipped clusters – amassed services. In the same way, the University square’s new structure is formulated preserving its ‘vacant’ qualities through the tactical location of scattered programmatic spots, not camouflaged but rather slid into and over the carpet – a WUNDERCARPET. All ideas were embodied in a welter of forms and color . The quality of this approach is the fact that it surmounts the difficulty of putting things together in view of the dual nature of the square: at once the thing and its representation.

The layers reveal an order of information by means of superimposing levels of simultaneous knowledge.

It is applied as a method to maintain independence, fluctuation and evolution of diverse facts and components that have been applied. Subtle, yet

perceivable in plan, layers also apply to elevations.

The urban space is seen as invisible flows and visible materialization of information. It is a multiple generator in a complex field of forces.

The idea of combination among autonomous layers of information alludes, in effect, to urban form itself and to its disintegration in a new landscape of simultaneous forces, actions and events, open to synchronous coexistence among differing messages, developing commensurately one atop the other, in a dynamic transferable, synthetic and definitively multilayered nature of the contemporary device.

This multiplied nature of ‘the contemporary city’ demands a new type of cartography: at once open and compatible, selective and purposeful and often surprising and completely new. The layers overlap and the intersection consist in a historical collision that merges into a contemporary attitude.

Practically, it is a mosaic of patterns on an open canvas. The canvas drags its material reference from the buildings that lie upon it, and from the statues that give it structure. All other layers are subordinated to the canvas, the times they come from, and their previous function – overlayed green areas remain green, former living places grow into sitting places, etc.

The canvas negotiates it’s reality with the functional layer underground, through simple cuts and peels, that extend it towards the blue – thus making the parking disappear under the carpet.

The urban space is cut by traffic. In order to reconquer it’s former unity, besides the material language of the elements, the statues (in their current and former places) generate a magnetic field of light that subtly brings the two sides of the square together again, by night.

It should in the first place serve as a space for building the ‘landscape of one’s (or a collective’s) mind’. As such it should primarily augment the associative base for the design process, through offering access to a wide range of inspirational objects. Piata Universitclii is now a ‘Rabbit Hole’, in the urban world, that allows people to temporarily disappear in magic worlds with different logic and stories. A wundercarpet. *We consider the current intervention in the square as a temporary one, since the square cannot be ‘completed’ until the traffic problem is taken care of. In respect to this, the proposal works as an open-air museum – a place intended to generate community involvement and identification with the place and its past,so that one day people will ask, and then receive, their square back as it should be – a whole, and not a haotic patch-work.

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators:

The Garden of Forking Paths Open competition 03.2011 Brașov, RO 20000sqm FOR -

Project leader: Participation: Project leader Awards: Finalist

‘AN INVISIBLE LABYRINTH OF TIME. I LEAVE TO THE VARIOUS FUTURES MY GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS. THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS IS AN ENORMOUS RIDDLE, OR PARABLE, WHOSE THEME IS TIME; THIS RECONDITE CAUSE PROHIBITS ITS MENTION. TO OMIT A WORD ALWAYS, TO RESORT TO INEPT METAPHORS AND OBVIOUS PERIPHRASES, IS PERHAPS THE MOST EMPHATIC WAY OF STRESSING IT.’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” – Jorge Luis Borges

http://f-o-r.ro/-GPCSB

The park becomes a garden when one adds the time spent walking and the story beeing told while walking. The story is the collected matter from

experience looking towards the future. It is true then that just a connection functionality looses ground to contemplation.

We went back to the history of the hilly place to argue the need of a garden instead of a classic antrophized park. We therefore proposed a lanscape of exchange, views, joy and attachment.

The proposal is finally a paradox in the sense that our interventions lets the nature in the park autoevolve and florish by its self, supporting human lifes and stories in mutual recognition.

HONTERUS COURTYARD Open competition 12.2011 Brașov, RO 5200sqm FOR SYAA(syaa.ro), Alex Ciobota, Raluca Rusu (lanscape architects), Irina Criveanu (historical builidng specialist) Project leader: Adrian Soare, Participation: Concept, presentation, technical drawings Awards: Finalist Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators:

http://f-o-r.ro/-HONT

The intervention strategy is to establish the structural historical elements of the courtyard and enhance the its personality and clarity.

The draining system built in 1884 is refined and supplemented. The result is a complex drawing which marks up important symbolic elements. The sloped section towards the central church, transforms the square in a general amphitheatre towards the this landmark in the local community.

The stereotomy of the churche’s stone is also used in the pavement. The urban furniture is kept minimal, the features being the perimeter stone stairs that will be used as one. The proposed night lights preserves the character of the street lamps attached to the facades.

Current situation

The structural diagrig(red) was obtained by connecting intersection points between the slabs outline and equidistant parallels to the side outline of the shell

BAKU BOULEVARD Commission- Research, Mixed-use 2009 Baku, AZE Bjarke Ingels Group Andreas Klok Pedersen Intern- 3D modelling, presentation, model making, facade study Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Project leader: Participation:

Current pattern of windows has an orthogonal basis

Simulations

Project name: KENNY HEIGHTS Type: Commission- Research, Masterplan, Housing Date: 2009 Location: Kuala Lampur, MYS Size: Main office: Bjarke Ingels Group Colaborators: Project leader: Joao Albuquerque Participation: Intern- 3D modelling, presentation, model making, facade study Awards: -

This design questions the predominant and conventional balconies display in Housing high-rise Buildings.

Kuala Lumpur, being Malaysia’s reflex of Economical growth, has become one of the most explosive examples how a financial crescent may have a positive influence in the society, providing several investments on realestate that enhance life quality.

However, space is often provided not as a fully usable as inhabitable space, particularly in the specific cases of High-rise Buildings.

The Design for the Kenny Heights Towers focuses on this specific sittuation. The morphology of the common highrise balcony is here questioned, and re-interepretated towards a better human usage of space.

The long and narrow balcony is converted into a fully balanced proportioned balcony: a circular balcony becoming a external room for the appartment - an outdoor terrace with fully panoramic over the surroundings.

Project name: SHENZEN ENERGY MANSION Type: Invited competition- office 2009 Shenzhen, CHN 96000sqm Bjarke Ingels Group Arup, Transsolar Andreas Klok Pedersen Intern- 3D modelling, presentation, model making Awards: 1st Prize

Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Project leader: Participation:

http://big.dk/#projects-sem

The skyscaper has evolved as an economically efficient way to provide flexible, functional and well-illuminated workspaces for dense populations of professionals. Since the early 20th century, however, air conditioning and electric lighting have served as modern solutions to increasing demand without giving thought to environmental consequences or energy shortages.

Today the skyscarper needs to evolve into a new sustainable species. It must retain highly developed qualities such as flexibility, daylight, views, density and general usability while exercising new and untested attributes. Seen from the city SEM will appear as a classic shape with an organic pattern. A folded curtain wall shades the building from the sun and creates a comfortable interior climate. The folds create special niches and unique spaces inside the office floors

as well as on the street level around the building.

The traditional curtain wall glass facade has a low insulation level and leaves offices overheated by direct sunlight. The result, excessive air conditioning consumption for air conditioning as well as the need for heavy glass coating that makes the view seem permanently dull and grey. By combining maximum daylight exposure with minimal sunshine exposure and using integrated ways of limiting the need for cooling SEM serves a model for the 21st century skyscraper and energy headquarters.

D.A / DEMOGRAPHIC ADAPTOR Competition- Housing 10-12.2010 Moscow, RU 21000sqm FOR Gabriel Boldiș Oana Simionescu Project architect- 3D modelling, presentation, model making Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Project leader: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-A101

DA has its essence in the life patterns of a regular family. Translating this pattern into space has led to the creation of a “living” building, one that can grow/ shrink along with its inhabitants. This almost organic flexibility allows the ensemble to become a permanent place for negotiation, collaboration and real-estate opportunity.

Modulating living areas into small units and composing these units in zigzag in two directions brings some key benefits to this ensemble: solar light from four directions for each apartment, endless combination of the modules in the continuous process of generating apartments; a simple constructive concept; exterior spaces with a different gradient of intimacy; positioning the apartments toward the exterior/neighborhood as well as the interior/ community.

The structure of the modular ensemble is placed above the active-lane of the community. This shelters/ delimits public spaces – which function as an “engine” for the community and are conceived in 3 layers: spaces of attraction towards the community, spaces of maintaining/sustaining the community and spaces of self-forming the community. These spaces, together, lead to the creation of the specific nature of each ensemble through the presence of a specific community space.

DA is a complex housing type – capable of incorporating the evolution of its inhabitants – which facilitates new forms of communication and collective expression.

FASHION MUSEUM Competition- Tower, Museum 10-12.2010 Omotesando Street, Tokyo, JP 3500sqm FOR Claudiu TOMA Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation, model making Awards: Diploma project 9,43/10

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-DAL

The small footprint of the site dictates the need to go vertical. The basic vertical tower with its classical levels and segmented views is not enough when it comes to representing a museum. We were interested in continuity, difference in intensities, elegance and innovation. Therefore, we only kept the inner core from the classical tower, and we spiraled around it the path of the museum.

We obtained a 1,4km ascending path that works as a continuous transition of spaces. It is a gradient of intensities that follow one-another: a journey of initiation!

Functionally the height of the tower is divided into private spaces at the bottom, in the basement, public ones from the ground level going up – including the exhibition -, and the exclusive, semipublic spaces at the top end. Every space beside the parking and the storage rooms are naturally ventilated and get natural

light. Even though the administration is placed at the basement level, the sloped profile of the ceiling allows the offices to be natural lighted.

From the ground level, the visitor begins a process of initiation as a continuous accessional transition.

Space has no physical boundaries anymore – all the way up, different programs are animated with stairs and platforms. The slope starts at the entrance and is in direct relation to the street – creating urban space inside the entrance hall. There is a direct relationship with the urban balcony at the first floor where the souvenir shop is located. After passing the shop, the exhibition begins. The slope is a continuous transition of different shaped spaces and dynamic views.

The most spectacular area is the runway cantilevering at 80 meters high. The path concludes with a beautiful sloping Japanese garden accessed directly from the sky bar.

PLAN 3. ETG

6.03m 1.20m

3.88m

3.88m

+

=

+

=

7.23m

3.88m

PLAN 4. ETG 3.00m 3.88m

9.03m

3.88m

3 MODULSTØRRELSER

SAMMENSETNING AV MODULER GENERERER LEILIGHETER OG TERRASSER

KOMPOSISJON

CHECKMATE Invited competition- Residential 12.2011 SE FOR MODERNO Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

NÆRHET TIL NATUREN MENNESKER I NATUREN

SOL OG UTSIKT

http://f-o-r.ro/-CHECKMATE

MENNESKER I SOLEN

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PILGRIM CENTER Open competition- public function 11.2011 Roldal, NO 950sqm FOR PARASITE STUDIO Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation, model preparation Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-ROLDAL

The project addresses the complex design intentions of serving the interest of different groups with different targets but attracted by one unique symbol – the Roldal Church. The building has to become a centre for the local community and for the physical surroundings as well as a centre for the spiritual community, much more extended and dynamic, represented by the pilgrims. Through the complex meanings attributed by the design requirements, the building must have different meanings for its different targeted groups, but only one shape and appearance.

It is in its essence a symbolic meeting place that serves three main actions: gathering through its public dimension, remembering through its exhibition space that mainly represents a memory hall and meditation through the funeral service space.

The concept is generated by two main ideas: that of one singular appearance holding multiple meanings, and that of a dignified object blending with its surroundings while being aware of the middle

age wooden church. The result was a single fluid volume drawn from a singular sinuous curve that incorporates all the different functions and that stretches itself upon the program scheme housed within.

By analysing the topography of the site the inclination towards the river and the soft landscape are the obvious main features. The mellow curving of the terrain determined a curved building shape that has a strong connection to the ground. We chose to position the building towards the lower end of the site, in order to leave as much space as possible between the church and the pilgrim’s centre.

Although a large building, it doesn’t dominate its surroundings. The double curvature of the roof joins in a natural flow the building and the site. The idea of a green roof is drawn from the Norwegian model of traditional housing, and it is one of the main features that decreases its perceived weight and impact on the surroundings.

The design draws its generative idea from a complex set of visual and cultural references, starting from the sinuous traces of movement of pilgrims within the fjord landscape of Norway, to the fluid shapes of the Norwegian middle age figures of snakes and wild animals, to the general representation of waves and mountain ridges covered with snow.

The trace of the building is derived from a double orientation, towards two different symbolic and physical centres of focus. One is the church itself, towards which the funeral spaces gravitate and open visually through a funnel-like shape, and one is the public area with the fire-place as the “heart”, around which the building curls.

By its sinuous shape, the building integrates two separate outside gathering places, in direct link with the symbolism and functions of each end, reclaiming as much outside space as possible. The courtyard to the east is a solemn ceremonial space that bestows a state of contemplation; it has a direct

link to the graveyard and it serves as a space for private recollection. The courtyard to the west is the public place for gathering, welcoming the visitors and using the neighbouring mountain scenery as a background.

The building is lowered in its central part in order to allow a broad view towards the church from this courtyard.

In relation to the historic church, the pilgrim center itself becomes an outlook point, serving as a ‘church hill’ on which one can walk and observe the surroundings. The path described by the building, outside, on top, or inside, augment the importance of the old church, transforming it into a focal point for orientation and a true exhibit in the natural landscape.

Space and visual relations were the prime factors considered in the plan layout. Through the fact that the main public spaces can be arranged in a fluid unique perceived space, the particular shape of the building allows an effect of interior space maximisation.

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SENSIDERMA Comission- interior design 2012 Timisoara, RO 120sqm FOR ATELIER TREI, INHABIT Project architect - concept, presentation, furniture design, technical drawings, details Awards: 2012 A_TA 2012 Mention- Interior Design Section

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-SENSIDERMA

The project proposes an aerated approach for a background that will serve the activities of a medical practice- therefor a pure white is combined with sophisticated furniture in soft colours.

to emphasize this elements and a gentile camouflage for the new function was created by using a simple, fine contrast of mate/shiny, white/grey/ soft colours or some well placed mirrored surfaces.

Beside its function, the interior design mediated the complex context. Although it is inside an historical monument designed

by Laszlo Szekely, in 1911, the space suffered a number of changes that led eventually to a dilution of its character. Proportions, wall thickness are elements that speak alone about this buildings past. Therefor, every intervention that we proposed tries

The facade decoration and the motifs on common staircase, becomes a theme, a positive/negative game expressed by frames, horizontal registers and check board motifs.

These geometric patterns continuously refers to the square. The clean/primitive square shape became the reference for the ceiling plan, the ceramics, the playful mirrors, the furniture facades and other furniture pieces.

HOUSE BBB Comission 07-12.2011 Sag, RO 250sqm FOR Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation, model preparation Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

CORNER HOUSE Solution study- residential, mixed use 01.2010 Timisoara, RO FOR Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation, model preparation Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

1. Utopia is a very slippery notion as it can be understood in many ways. Over time it has had many interpretations, starting from its most radical and imaginative forms (see unrealistic), until the social engineering of totalitarian political projects or the disillusion of concrete projects. Can you give a personal definition of the concept of Utopia?

Etymologically, the notion of utopia comes from the Greek language – «ou-topos», which means witho place, anywhere. In the original context, the word did not have any connotative meaning. Gradually, it became more specialised and ended up designating a species of the fiction genre. In a pejorative sense, it designates any idea that is too advanced, too optimistic or lacking realism, that seems impossible to accomplish. An immortal attempt to create the perfect society, utopia is an illusion, an unreality, a chimera.

The definition therefore exists and we can assimilate utopia into a type of project that is imaginary, fantastic and unachievable because of objective conditions. By extension, we can say that an architecture project is a utopia, because such a project implies vision, projection, perspective or conception. Invariably thinking about the meaning of «utopia», thoughts fly to the fantastic worlds of Victor Hugo or Studio Ghibli, worlds which, miraculously, become fragments of reality once in a while...

Recently, we were laughing while reading the title of a new book that is not published yet, signed by Keller Easterling: «The action is the form. Victor Hugo’s TED talk». I wonder what Hugo could also tell about the future now when modules of his utopia became reality?

And especially, how would he transpose his utopias into 20 minutes of TED? From within the profession, we are still fascinated by the wonderful utopias developed by ARCHIGRAM, ARCHIZOOM, CONSTANT NIEUWENHUYS or SUPERSTUDIO in the 60s-70s; «moderate utopias», as they called them back then... Utopias based on impressive formal gestures, fabulous mega structures which, almost all of them, functioned as flexible networks.

Utopias of today are much less radical. We are focusing much more on technology, from robotics to shapegenerating algorithms, to electronic systems for managing and controlling cities, to matters of sustainability and ecology. Utopia, as an attempt to generate a perfect society, is more and more rarely met. Is it possible for capitalism to have succeeded in forging a perfect society? Or have we just lost our faith that cities or architecture could do that?

Architecture is one of the most powerful mechanisms for imagining the future, as the discipline of construction, the expressivity of material and infinite configurations of spaces are always oriented towards the future.

Architecture itself is a utopia. Eternally, by its constructions, trying to transform any place into a better one.

«The action is the form» says Keller Easterling. The new architectural utopias leave the forms at the end, in order to concentrate on actions and strategies. The new utopias are ironically more pragmatic, more real. We already know that dreams can come true, and we bet all our money on the new architecture: information.

Can utopia, therefore, be defined? Utopia is essentially any project; it is the incipient state of any approach: rearrangement of information, relations between what is seen and what is said, between what is done and what can be done.

2. Utopia generally aims to find future answers to current problems. For the moment, which are the stringent aspects in a utopia? What problems do you believe require visionary solutions as soon as possible?

The most stringent aspect in a utopia is finding correct answers, but also the incertitude that you will be able to do that. The process of searching for correct answers is a project itself. The fish inside the fish. Many times, this smaller fish ends up getting sick or even killing the fish that contains it. For greater ease, is it possible to replace utopia with dreaming?

If we eliminate the pressure of finality, utopia would be the perfect definition for anything related to ideas, projects and fantasies. How could we rank these utopias, so to prioritise the most necessary ones: qualitatively or quantitatively? As architects, we would probably answer «qualitatively», but what happens when the majority or the quantity imposes the rules of the game? It would be ideal to answer the quantity by quality so that afterwards, the majority can naturally choose quality. The formative process is difficult due to communications difficulties with the quantitative mass. Choosing the quantitative approach can be easily refuted. Politics

and art, as forms of knowledge, build fiction. Both, on these suffering areas.

3. How often can you afford to «dream architecture» and how complicated does this process of escaping from everyday practices and reality become?

As I was saying above, any project is a utopia up to a certain point. Imagination is a human feature by excellence. Precisely the process of escaping from the quotidian is the easiest step to be done. However, at what point do chimeras reach their purpose? They have their merit in the architectural process, but what will the concrete result be, if they do not overlap with reality? We aim to dream in a pragmatic and anchored manner; to identify needs and to transform them into opportunities, to build utopias on themes in which we believe and to imagine a result that is possible to obtain through sustained effort and enthusiasm. Quotidian reality sometimes offers the pleasant fight with the unpredictable, with dogmas or the mentality. We will never know immediately in which points we are wrong or we do not make ourselves understood, and our dream about architecture is rooted in the society in which we live. A more appropriate version of this question for us would be: Do you ever stop dreaming architecture?

Many years ago, Priscilla Chapman (in the article Plug-in city) said: «The terrible thing in England is that architects are so overintellectualised and self-critical that they are afraid of taking a step for fear it won’t be right». Utopias are projects that are ideally free from those pressures. There are beginnings, or manifests, or cartoons, or the simple illustration of some dreams.

part of it, being created and fed by it.

These hybrids, buildings, ensembles or just clusters of urban activities look back with melancholy towards models that oncefunctioned, and longingly to the future, in the hope of a possible reconciliation between the worlds that compose the urban universe. It is interesting how the mineral urban establishment, with its mineral activities, naturally attracts nature with all its benefits between its walls.

in their pure, imaginative state.

We would avoid singularly naming utopia for Romania and wewould prefer to imagine a range of fields, languages and interestsin which they are imagined. We dream of an entire network ofinterconnected utopias.

We wish for utopias that constructivelymobilise, incite to dreaming and open eyes. We wish we could use the time line as support. Flow and continuity should be generated.

Each stage of our cities had another approach with regard to nature. Many of them disagreed. However, most of the time, they overlapped. For us, this overlapping of layers of cities presents a charm and an extraordinary potential. In Romania, this tangle somewhat orchestrated by layers brings us close enough to a zero point. This fact leaves much room for utopia. We believe that one of the most interesting answers to the problem of reintroducing nature into the city would be infrastructure. And by infrastructure we are not limited to transportation means and production, but to the entire fabric on which our buildings are positioned.

On the other hand, micro-farming is one of the ancient practices of cities’ inhabitants. Many of them were forcedly separated from nature and brought to places where they still live now. Because micro-agriculture worked until then, it can be a landmark or a model. Is it possible for the Romanian city to offer the opportunity to practice micro-agriculture on a large scale? It could also thus answer a need for belonging and identity also, in a mass of identities mixed until uniformity. Nature could contribute, including to the reconstruction of a local group identity.

6. We are trying to identify some elements that can connect theidea of utopia with the peculiarities of the Romanian space. In youropinion, what would those elements be that can define a Romanianutopia?

The specific Romanian aspect could be the utopia of socialengineering, although it is unfair to restrict the area of socialismto the local area. Even today, Romania is roaring with dreams thatwould wish for a change of mentality and perception. And we, likemany others, longingly imagine a better society.Concretely, we live in partial realization of a dream. Our contributioncould be planting new dreams. Their correctness is questionable dueto the fact that these dreams usually represent cultural loans fromsocieties with different histories and profiles. Its specific aspects and identification can intervene here. It is a prolonged process, like a puzzle that must be completed by solving the pieces in time. It is not guaranteed that we will finally see an image. Therefore, these punctual projections that cannot build the perfect utopia remain, but they can only be part of an ample process of history. As history sifts by itself, independently from our force, the defining aspects of time, the enthusiasm of the initiative concretised in information remains. ARCHIGRAM utopias remained the utopias of ARCHIGRAM, in the lack of a political system that could put them into practice. They would have become the utopias of Great Britain in the case of the existence of such a system. In order to orchestrate the acceptance and the embrace of any type of utopia, first we need vision and the ability to understand the overall picture. Therefore, we cannot currently speak about Romanian utopias, but only about utopias of a few Romanians.

7. Starting from your current concerns in the field of architecture, if we were to write a future history of the possible, how do you imagine Romania in a utopian vision? In what time horizons could these prophecies be concretised?

The fight with recognition in time and the memory of a utopia in a history of the future is as difficult as it is exciting. Because the certitude of history as an independent selection mechanism does not exist, management through visions of the present remains. We accept the challenge and we are in full process of dreaming.

The possibilities are unlimited for the current moment.

Romania’s image could still depend on what we all propose now. In a utopian vision, we imagine Romania as a place of collaboration, an environment favourable for dreaming and generating networks of pragmatic, complete utopias, with echo.

We are still left with the rigorous construction based on dreaming, information, effectiveness (preferable in its complex meaning from the electronic networks’ world) and practical utility or the architectural process of a vision with correct foundations.

They can be the best only at the moment and they have the wonderful quality of instigating to dialogue and action. They are based on information. Ephemeral and full of sap, utopias are always present in a healthy creative process.

5. There is a state of deep anchoring in the contingent in Romania that leads to difficulty in dreaming the future. Why and to whatextent is a utopia necessary today in Romania, after more than 60 years of absence?

8. In what way do your projects perform this exercise of imagination and what are its utopian elements?

The architecture or construction of a vision is based on a set of analyses of the context and its history. Closing the circle by analysing the past for a future result, always having the present in the circle is problematic. Most of the time, the past works as an extremely useful 4. Today a concern regarding the integration of nature Being always broken into pieces as small as possible and vast database, as a reference. However, to what extent in construction is often noted: the classical opposition spread everywhere, we lost our ability to control our does a future project remain utopian when it is based between urban and natural is dissolved to produce future. We are no longer able to read the overall picture, on the analysis of a utopia? To what extent does the new hybrids. What roles does nature acquire in the or to act as independent communities. The contingent is credibility of information survive, being about a utopia? context of the city you imagined? the partial result of a sum of individual or group dream- How correct would the rethinking of new value systems ing. We can imagine a chronological line that brings the and functions be when the base is the result of a utopian Landscape is the infrastructure from which any built point of the current moment as close as possible to us engineering? Is it possible to have as a starting point environment begins. Buildings represent abstract in real time. If we were to put together all the dreams another utopia? The grey neighbourhood, this utopia objects introduced into the landscape. Human activities of humankind, they would gather perfectly into what of Romanian social engineering, can receive two and actions are those that weave the two worlds one to we see today around us at every point, successively. We interpretations. The vision directly transformed into a another. Nature is perfect; it does not need our eliminated here the erased objects, and we remember social project based on oppression; this version has been abstract objects. Moreover, it also has the ability to foronly visible results. It is too much to say that dreaming over for a long time and seems to be in a full process get them relatively easily. We, in turn, are fundamentally was absent. At the most we can say that the results are of erasing the tracks with time. The second and the connected to nature. Imagination, emotion, joy cannot few, and the most visible ones have a negative character. most dangerous is utopia that is based on the change of exist in the absence of nature... man’s roots are in nature. But this automatically suggests an accumulation of behaviour, of mentality, perception and ideals. Resetting Romanian archaic myths present us the man as being utopias that were just imagined... and which remained the man in order to be controlled – this is still active.

HEAD UP contribution Commission- animation 08.2012 Venice, IT 1min FOR INTERMOTIONAL Project leader- concept Awards: Exhibited at the New Galery of the Romanian Institut for Culture(Cannaregio, 2214 / 30121) Venice Architecture Biennalle 2012

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhe7Rbw3I

We were invited to join Atelier Mass’s ‘HEAD UP!’ project at the ICR Romanian pavilion from Venice Biennale. As the other utopia-fan architects invited, we participated with a short video and an interview regarding the Romanian utopia!

The idea of the project was represented as a graphically translated evolution/involution of the Romanian society through the filter of its housing architecture.

Quite abstract approach from INTERMOTIONAL, that we appreciated as an excellent graphical critique to Romanian’s always present tendencies to make the same mistakes over and over again, while yearning at what defines us best: nature, simplicity and fellowship.

A never ending, but somehow optimist, turmoil.

BAUHAUS MUSEUM Open competition- museum 10.2011 Weimar, DE 3500sqm FOR FORMA+ Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation, model preparation Awards: -

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-BAUHAUS

PUBLIC LIBRARY EXTENSION Open competition- library 10-12.2010 Cluj-Napoca, RO 5066sqm FOR ATELIER TREI Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, presentation Awards: Finalist

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-BCU

URBAN ACCUPUNCTURE Research- urban strategy 03.2011 The public space FOR Project leader- concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: Nominalization A_TA 2011, Section: Projects

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-URBACC

Most Romanian cities lack vision for the future, sometimes they even seem to be oriented against people – they are filled up with places that lack identity and function. New developments tend to be superficial, don’t consult the public and lack professional involvement. In spite of this chaotic environment, there is a huge, unexplored potential for these urban spaces.

Packed in a digital application, the project tries to give an understandable interface to the process of design. In a society where architecture is usually for sale, we try to engage a new kind of dialogue with the public – one more comfortable for them. We are trying to teach them, through the means of technology, that architecture is a complex process of analysis and answer to specific needs. The first sustainable idea of this project is to give the process of design time and importance in a society that doesn’t care about it. The process is very simple: once you selected the site, you

go through the 27 layers of analysis, choosing your pavilion; once one chose a pavilion one can visualize it in the site and picture events there.

We chose to emphasize on the application because of the problems of communication we have here among cities, professionals and public. We need to make people and cities understand how even small interventions can change the perception and life of space. Filling up empty space with activities and teaching people how to use it in order for them to engage in dialogue is of great importance in a healthy society. The target of this project is the better use of public space. To illustrate it we designed 4 different temporary pavilions. But this is only the beginning of a long term strategy. More pavilions should be developed and given to the public in time.

The project starts with UP. It is an installation inspired by networks – starting from a constellation

to social networking and the internet. It is 250 cardboard columns can sustain infinite combinations of events and activities. Putting plants on top of the columns adds a temporal layer to the concept and helps it make a transition between the sea of asphalt of the square and the park behind it. Construction for this project will start in may 2011, in Victoriei Square, Bucharest.

MELTING POT is a balancing platform that through its movement makes people aware of one another. It is also an interaction platform, its movement being supported by a media plug-in that keeps people connected and informed.

S21 is a small scale reinterpretation of the amphitheater. It will be used emphasize the potential of linear sites, usually only used for passage.

TOWER PAVILLION is a continuous loop that offers users the possibility of viewing the surroundings

from different heights, while also framing important areas of the city.

INNOVATION AND TRANSFERABILITY The designs and sites were chosen as examples of how this strategy will work, but the process shouldn’t stop here. The application is also meant to start dialogue in the design world. The innovation of this idea is that through the application a niche of design could become an open source, accessible think tank – transferability.

Presenting projects through methods that bring joy to the user, makes them more accessible. With accessibility comes understanding, assimilation and implementation. An important aspect of the strategy is that only projects that become appreciated by the public will get built, with this involving both public and authorities in the process of design.

Innovation can also be found in the materials and technologies used. UP is made out of cardboard tubes

and screw-like foundations. All the materials used to build it can either be recycled, reused separately or reused to build homes for refugees. The materials make the projects affordable and easy to implement.

ETHICAL STANDARDS AND SOCIAL EQUITY This project is an initiative that comes to meet expressed needs. It is a tool to help people understand how to use public space as means of interaction and recreation instead of accepting it as it is. The quality of public space is a direct indicator of democracy.

The project engages urban spaces in a dialogue with architects, users and authorities, having as target not only the revival of a particular space, but to introduce and exercise this kind of dialogue between members of our society.

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND COMPATIBILITY Less money, more social effect. Due to low budget, this

project could be easily financed. It could be sustained by administration, private investors or sponsors – the material strategy initiates a dialogue with different material producers.

The pavilions also have their own financial life after construction through the cultural agenda they will host. It is important to use this potential as a possible financing source for the next URBAN ACCUPUNCTURE. CONTEXTUAL AND AESTHETIC IMPACT The aesthetic impact of a well designed object, that is already accepted by the public, on a grey impersonal setting should lead to the transformation of people’s optics on the potential of public spaces.

Aesthetics is the trigger that determine people to be an active part in designing their cities. It is also the central tool of this strategy – using an application to make architecture accessible to the public.

UP / Urban pavilion Open competition/commission 03-07.2010 Urban pavilion 12sqm FOR PATHROUT, ATELIER TREI, INTERMOTIONAL, THY VEILS Participation: Concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: ARHETIPURI 2010 1st Prize Special Prize A_TA 2011, Section: Projects

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators:

http://f-o-r.ro/-UP

“Wealth in this new regime flows directly from innovation, not optimisation; that is, wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but by imperfectly seizing the unknown” - Kevin Kelly, “New rules for the new economy”, Wired.

From the very beginning we set out to produce innovative solutions – the times we are living right now, as a society, demand such answers. We decided that we have only to gain from taking up this exercise of positive attitude. The motivation behind our projects was to start a real dialogue between members of today`s Romanian society. The art of coexisting with various partners should lead to a dialogue such as this.

Learning to respect those around us – in public as well as in private – is one of the main demands for a healthy

society that wishes to move forward. Such dialogue can only happen in places where people meet to share their experiences.

UP was the last of the 5 projects created for this competition. The Site in Piata Victoriei seemed the most difficult to approach – it is a very open, very dynamic site without a significant pedestrian component – an urban space destined mostly for automobiles and, at the same time, a very important location for Bucharest.

By studying the scale of the square compared to the maximum surface allowed for the pavilion we realized that it could easily become an odd, small object on a sea of asphalt. The first impulse was to slice the maximum volume and to spread it on the site in various combinations – we immediately

realized the potential of this type of an operation and took it to its maximum: an explosion. Thus, instead of creating a singular element we suggest an open space in which the whole and the parts have almost the same value.

The boundaries between interior and exterior become very vague, the pavilion being, at the same time, a small urban development. The solution suggests an intervention that is at the same time visible, yet subtle, with the relative delimitation of spaces outlining a flexible scenography, capable of harboring a greater variety of human interaction.

Connecting this concept with the notion of “constellation” seemed to us a natural step. This represented an excellent rule for arranging a multitude of items and an extraordinary means to a powerful social concept.

The pavilion starts its life as a white, artificial composition, which will, in the year that has been allotted to it, gradually be colored and swallowed by the plants that grow from the top of the posts. Thus it gains a temporal dimension and forms a bridge between “the asphalt sea” and the “green tongue” behind it.

Developing strategies related to the architectural part was vital in explaining the high potential of this project. Collaborating with specialists in various fields and with the companies that produce the materials allowed us to bring this project to a high level of detail and understanding. The idea of the metalic foundations and the cardboard tubes allowed us to realize a technical strategy that works together with the other strategies of the pavilion. According to the situation, the entire construction can be either

recycled, rebuilt, recomposed or a combination of these options.

UP is a very simple, yet complex concept, whose logical trace has been carefully followed throughout its development. Not even the choice of name is coincidental – Urban Pavilion / UP generates a direction and an attitude!

Melting Pot Open competition 03-07.2010 Bucharest, RO 12sqm FOR PATHROUT, ATELIER CAAD Project leader: Concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: ARHETIPURI 2010 3rd Prize Nominalization A_TA 2011, Section: Projects

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-MPOT

Melting Pot is a collective space, open and accesible, having an element of surprise represented by the movement produced by people on the pavilion. Its dynamic feature offers a permanent social awareness about the presence of other persons nearby.

Melting Pot creates communication between its visitors due to its special shape that facilitates, however small, a continuous movement when people are present.

Taking the Melting Pot concept of an interactive pavilion a step further, we added a multimedia feature with speakers, wi-fi and

data server which can be accessed only in the pavilion’s area.

Therefor, the humans are permitted intervention onto the pavilion’s memory.

Each visitor can leave a mark, which he/she can come back to and change afterwards.

By using the technology, it is meant to activate social awareness, and therefore the pavilion supports experience exchange and social practices creating real and also virtual communities.

Melting Pot succeeds in blurring the difference between organic and mechanical.

The pavilion is activated once it is populated.

Therefore the analogy between the pavilion and an organism becomes viable by introducing the human element. The movement and the virtual memory are triggered by the people.

may become a stage for theatre plays, concerts, any type of small-scale events, a recreational and socializing place.

More and more artists are offering their art freely directly to their consumers, without it being filtered by such as record companies.

Melting Pot represents a platform and Well-known bands chose this strategy to a background for various events. It adds launch their albums/singles, in order for attractivity and colour to the Herastrau Park, them to become closer with their target contributing in a positive way to Bucharest’s audience and for opening alternative ways urban landscape. Due to its capacity to host of communication between themselves and open events, it may bring multiple benefits their fans. The same scenario can be applied to the institutions/entities who use it. It is a to the Melting Pot: bands that are represented pavilion with various utilization possibilities it or independent, writers, photographers, etc.,

may use the pavilion as a mediator between themselves and the public in rder to bring them together and to make communication easier. The pavilion and its visitors are updating and activating each other, becoming a part in each other’s life. Consequently, the space becomes time- time spent in THE MELTING POT COMMUNITY.

S21(21 sections) Open competition 03-07.2010 Timisoara, RO 100sqm FOR PATHROUT Project leader: Concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: ARHETIPURI 2010 Honourable Mention

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-S21

The final object resolves a number of functional needs: a gallery, stair, sitting places, urban amphitheatre. The name describes its morphology, 21 horizontal sections made of wood and attached to a structural body made of vertical wooden frames.

The final object became a social attractor ready to be populated with different social events, in, on and around it.

TILIA Open competition- urban instalation 04.2013 Sibiu, RO 20sqm FOR Project leader: Concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: HUET Competition- Honourable Mention

SCALE YOURSELVES Open competition 2009 online, JP FOR Project leader: Concept, 3D modelling, graphic design, presentation Awards: Honourable Mention

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

Project name: Type: Date: Location: Size: Main office: Colaborators: Participation:

http://f-o-r.ro/-HUET

http://f-o-r.ro/-WSCA

January 2010- present Architect- Founding partner- F O R (asociate: Oana Simionescu) Mercy 7 Timișoara, RO www.f-o-r.ro - partner, decision factor - project leader - concept, solution studies, building documentation, client presentation, model making, architectural competitions Activity sector: ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM Runner-up 2013 EUROPAN Competition- Kristinehamn, SE The Centre. The Path. The Field of Action.

1st Prize, 3rd prize, Mention 2010 A_TA 2010 Rayners Prize – best regional projectUP-Arhetipuri 2011 Prague Architecture Week, UP, Prague, CZ Competition- Arhetipuri 2010, RO- colaborators ATELIER TREI, ATELIER CAAD(settled) 2012 A_TA 2012 Mention - section Interior design Commission SENSIDERMA interior design, Timișoara, RO- colaborators ATELIER TREI 2013 Mention and reserve project for construction Competition Urban instalation in Huet Sqaure, Sibiu, RO Itinerant exhibition in Europe Competition- Mashtab Urban Block, Rusia(settled) Finalist Competition- Library extension, Cluj- Napocacolaborators ATELIER TREI 2009 Prize for exelent performance – World Space Creators, JP Competion- World Space Creators 2009,2011 Competition- Hands on door handles- designboom Finalist October 2010- present Competition- Park design in Livada Poștei, Brașov, RO 2011 Prize and Urban Inventor title, Galați, RO Invited assistent- Faculty of Architecture, Timișoara Competition- plus/minus Galați, RO Traian Lalescu Nr. 2/A 300 223 Timişoara România 2011 A_TA 2011 Excelence prize www.arh.upt.ro - project section for GREYNEIGHBOURHOOD - 1st Year of Study -DESIGN STUDIO(2010-2014); REHABILITATION ass. arch. Cristian Blidariu and ass. arch.Erika Dudaș 2011 A_TA 2011 Nominalization - 3rd and 4th Year of Study- Computer aided DESIGN - project section for URBAN ACCUPUNCTURE (2012-2014) Competition- Holcim Awards 2011- URBAN ACCUPUNCTURE, GREYNEIGHBOURHOOD 1st Year of Study- BLOG responsabile - http:// REHABILITATION- colaborators PLAY GRANDS arhitectura1tm.wordpress.com/ Competition- University Square design, Bucharest, ROSummer WORKSHOP- organiser, tutorcolaborators SYAA, OLGV GRASSHOPPERS IN AETHER 2012(parametric Finalist architecture) - http://lacusteineter.wordpress.com/ Competition- Honterus Square design, Brașov, ROSummer WORKSHOP/STUDY TRIP- organiser, tutorcolaborators SYAA ÎN DERIVĂ 2012–Timișoara, Cluj, Sibiu, RO (toghether Competition- Bauhaus museum, Weimar, Germanywith ass. arch. Cristian Blidariu) colaborators FORMA+ Summer WORKSHOP- organiser, tutorCompetition Europan 11- colaborators GRASSHOPPERS IN AETHER 2013(parametric PARASITESTUDIO architecture) - http://lacusteineter2.wordpress.com/ Competition Pilgrim Center, Roldal, SE- colaborators Summer WORKSHOP- organiser, tutor- TEA MODERNO, PARASITESTUDIO PAVILION at HODONI MANSION 2013 (toghether Invited competition Social housing, NO- colaborators with arch. Oana Simionescu) - http://arhitectura2tm.

MODERNO wordpress.com/2013/07/15/pavilionul-de-la-hodoni/ Commission Casa BBB, Șag, RO Summer WORKSHOP- organiser, tutor- HIDDEN Commision Hotel facade proposal, Timișoara, ROTIMIȘOARA (toghether with WERKRAUM - http:// colaborators D-CONTEXT www.werkraum.ro/) Commission CCOR- Central square proposal, Oțelu Summer WORKSHOP/STUDY TRIP- organiser, tutorRoșu, RO- colaborators D-CONTEXT HAȚEG COUNTY, RETEZAT MOUNTAINS 2013– Commission HOUSE F, Timișoara, RO- colaborators Romania(toghether with arch. Mirel Drăgan) ATELIER TREI Summer WORKSHOP/STUDY TRIP- organiser, tutorCommission HOUSE BBB, Timișoara, RO- colaborators STRATEGY IN FOUR TOWERS, Sebeș, RO 2014 – ATELIER TREI Romania(toghether with arch. Mirel Drăgan) Commission HOUSE B, Timișoara, RO- colaborators Summer WORKSHOP/STUDY TRIP- organiser, ATELIER TREI tutor- ORAVIȚA IN THE STREETS, Sebeș, RO 2014 – Commission SENSIDERMA, Timișoara, RORomania(toghether with arch. Costache Comănoaia) colaborators ATELIER TREI Competition Europan 12 Activity sector: ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

Professional experience:

October 2008- October 2009

October 2006- February 2008 Intern- PARASITE STUDIO(associates: Maja Bâldea, Attila Wenczel, Claudiu Toma) Lev Tolstoi 16 300481 Timișoara, RO www.parasitestudio.com - solution study, building documentation, presentation, model-making, architectural competitions Activity sector: ARCHITECTURE 2007 A_TA 2007 1st PRIZE, section projects Hotel and vinery , Deva, RO(settled) 2007 A_TA 2007 nominalization, interior design section MODE Cafe, Timișoara, RO(completed) Competition- Library extension, Stockholm, SE(settled) Competition- Amzei Square rehabilitation, Bucharest, RO(settled) Competition- Europan 9, Bisceglie, IT(settled) Competition Pilgrim Center, Roldal, SE(settled) Competition- Europan 11, Szeged, HU(settled)

Intern- Bjarke Ingels Group(principal: Bjarke Ingels) Kløverbladsgade 56 2500 Valby, Copenhagen, DK www.big.dk -concept, presentation, model-making responsible, 3d modelling, research, architectural competitions Activity sector: ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM ZIR ZIRA ZERO Island, Baku, Azerbaijan Void House, Greece Competition- BYM Arhus Bymuseum, Arhus, DK(settled) Syhavnen, Copenhagen, DK RIK Marienberg, Stockholm, Sweden ORE Oresundparken boliger, Copenhagen, DK 1st Prize Competition- TAT New Mairy building, Tallinn, Estonia(ongoing) KHF Kenny Heights, Kuala Lampur, Malaysia 1st Prize Competition- MET Metrozone, Hamburg, Germania Baku Boulevard, Baku, Azerbaijan BAD Bade project, Taiwan 1st Prize Competition- SEM Shenzhen Energy Mansion, China(ongoing)

January 2011-June 2013 Junior architect- Atelier TREI (partners: Codruța Negrulescu, Cosmin Bloju, Victor Popovici) Mercy 7 SAD III Timișoara, RO www.ateliertrei.ro - concept, solution studies, building documentation, client presentation, model making, architectural competitions Activity sector: ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM Building rehabilitation of Citadel Theresia, Timișoara, RO(completed) Facade study, Traian Square, Timișoara, RO(settled) AP Hotel , Oraștie, RO(ongoing) House F, Timișoara, RO(ongoing) SENSIDERMA, Timișoara, RO(completed) Competition- Arhetipuri 2010, Timișoara and Bucharest, RO(settled) Competition- Library extension, Cluj-Napoca, RO(settled)

2014 ORAVIȚA IN THE STREET, Oravița, RO - organiser and workshop tutor 2014 A STRATEGY IN FOUR TOWERS, Sebeș, RO - workshop tutor ARHITECTURA nr.1/2013 – NUMĂR SPECIAL, TIMIȘOARA – ”Cartierele gri”/ Grey neighbourhoods ARHITECTURA nr. 3, 2012, ”Transformare – Acțiunile sunt noile forme!”/ Transform- actions are the new forms IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF SUBURBAN BUILDING STOCK, 2012, ed. UnifePress – ”Case study: Grey neighbourhood rehabilitation” SUBURBANSCAPES, 2012, ed. ALINEA EDITRICE – ”Case study: Romania, Soarelui neighbourhood.”

ORAȘUL POSIBIL. Intervenții în spațiul urban postcomunist., 2012, ed. Act. - ”G.R.I. – Galați, resursă de identitate.”/ The would-be city. Interventions on the postcommunist urban space- G.R.I Galați Resource of Identity HEAD UP! – catalogul PAVILIONULUI ROMÂNIEI – ICR, DIN CADRUL BIENALEI DE LA VENEȚIA, BIENALA DE ARHITECTURĂ, EDIȚIA 2012 – interviu/ interview- national participation at the Venice Architectural Biennale CATALOG ARCHITECTURE WEEK PRAGA 2011 ARHITECTURA nr. 87, sep.2010 ARHITEXT nr. 8-9, anul XVII, ”Visul unei nopți de vară” – interviu/ Mid-night summer dream- interview Igloo nr. 106, anul VIII ARHIFORUM, national architectural web-portal, 2010- personal page, office page, project publication

2014 The annual architecture event, Timișoara, RO a_ta2014 - www.anualadearhitectura.ro - organiser 2013 TEA PAVILION, Hodoni, RO – organiser and workshop tutor 2013 LĂCUSTE ÎN ETER , Timișoara, RO – parametric architecture- www.lacusteineter2.wordpress.com - organiser and workshop tutor 2013 STUDY TRIP and WORKSHOP, Churces in Hațeg County and Retezat Mountains, RO - organiser and workshop tutor 2013 HIDDEN TIMIȘOARA, Timișoara, RO – organiser and workshop tutor 2012 LĂCUSTE ÎN ETER , Timișoara, RO – parametric architecture- www.lacusteineter.wordpress.com - organiser and workshop tutor 2012 SPRINGSCHOOL, Arhitectura unei viziuni.

Motivul:piața volantă , Cluj-Napoca, RO/ The architecture of a vision, case-study itinerant vegetablesmarket – workshop tutor 2012 Young and succesfull antrepenours, Timişoara, RO – participant 2008 IMPROVEMENT OF THE ENERGETIC BALANCE IN REFURBISHING HISTORIC BUILDINGS, Timişoara, RO - participant 2006 EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTS, Dorenthe, DE, Organiser Kaja West Foundation- www.kajawest.de - participant

2013 Mokum cafe exhibition, F O R projects/models, Timișoara, RO 2012 Head up! Venice Architecture Biennalle, national participation, curated by Atelier Mass 2012 A_TA 2012(Sensiderma, Arhitectura unei viziuni, CCOR), Timișoara, RO 2011 Prague Architecture Week, UP, Prague, CZ - UP Urban pavilion

2013 Art and Architecture, Ion Mincu Highschool, Timișoara, RO 2012 A_TA 2012 - Sensiderma, Arhitectura unei viziuni/ The architecture of a vision 2012 SPRINGSCHOOL 2012, CLUJ NAPOCA, RO – Projects by F O R 2011 plus/minus GALAȚI- G.R.I Galați Resource of Identity, Galați, RO

DATE – 40 DE ANI DE ÎNVĂȚĂMÂNT SUPERIOR DE ARHITECTURĂ LA TIMIȘOARA, 2010/ 40 years of superior architectural education in Timișoara

2006 STUDENTFEST, Timişoara, RO, theme: FLUX section ARCHITECTURE - organiser

YES IS MORE. An archicomic on Architectural Evolution, Taschen, 2009

2011 Project exhibition , Galați, RO G.R.I Galați Resource of Identity

2010 seri(i)le D’arc, 2010, Timișoara, RO – ARHETIPURI – 3 winning projects

STUDENT TRENDS nr. 1 , 2007-2008, ed.

POLITEHNICA

2005 STUDENTFEST , Timişoara, RO, theme: IDENTITY Special Prize given by Faculty of Architecture, Timişoara, RO - workshop participant

2010 Modeling Museums International Model Festival, Muzeul modei, Budapest, HU- Fashion Museum

2009 seri(i)le D’arc, 2009, Timișoara, RO – INSIDE BIG

Publications:

Workshops and events:

Exhibitions:

Lectures and presentations:

2011 A_TA 2011(Reabilitarea cartierelor gri, Accupunctura urbana), Timișoara, RO

2011 A_TA 2011- Reabilitarea cartierelor gri

2014 Excelence diploma, The urbanists register of Romania, Timișoara, RO main office F O R 2014 Runner-up, EUROPAN EUROPE, Kristinehamn, SE main office F O R 2013 Mention, Urban instalation competition,Huet Square, Sibiu, RO main office F O R 2013 Excelence certificate from Unirii Square Association, Timișoara, RO for public space participation representing architect’s crafmanship in June 2013 main office F O R 2012 A_TA 2012 Nominalization – Projects Section (The Architecture of a vision workshop) main office F O R 2012 A_TA 2012 Mention- Interior Design Section (SENSIDERMA) main office F O R 2011 A_TA 2011 Excelence Prize- Projects section(Grey neighbourhood rehabilitation) main office F O R 2010 Arhetipuri First Prize- UP, București, RO main office F O R 2010 A_TA 2010 Rayners Prize – best regional projectUP-Arhetipuri main office F O R 2011 Prize for Urban Invention, Galați, RO main office F O R 2010 Runner-up Student of the Year, Bucuresți, RO personal competition 2010 Arhetipuri Third Prize- Melting-pot, București, RO main office F O R 2010 Arhetipuri Mention - S21, Timișoara, RO main office F O R 2009 First Prize SEM Shenzhen Energy Mansion competition, China main office BIG 2009 Prize for excelent perofrmance – World Space Creators, JP personal competition 2009 Winner -Competition for the Graphic sign of 4thFLOOR ASSOCIATION, architecture student association in Timișoara, RO personal competition 2009 First Prize TAT Tallinn Mairie, ET main office BIG 2009 First Prize MET Metrozone, Hamburg, DE main office BIG 2007 A_TA 2007 Nominalization, Interior design section, MODE, Timișoara, RO main office PARASITE STUDIO 2007 A_TA 2007 Excelence Prize, Projects Section, Hotel and vinery, Deva, RO main office PARASITE STUDIO

Prizes and recognitions:

September 1999-June 2003 Informatics degree- Traian Doda Theoretical Highschool Carensebeș, RO Specialization: Turbo Pascal, C++

October 2003-June 2010 Architecture diploma(Bachelor degree, Master in architecture included)- Faculty of Architecture Timișoara Traian Lalescu Nr. 2/A 300 223 Timişoara România www.arh.upt.ro Diploma project title: Fashion Museum on Omotesando Street, Tokyo, JP Grade: 9.43/10 Multianual grade: 8.03/10

Education:

Mother language: Romanian Other foreign languages: English (C2, C2, C1, C1, C1) French (B1, A2, A2, A1, A1) German (A2, A1, A1, A1, A1) European common reference for foreign languages (UNDERSTANDING-Listening, UNDERSTANDING-Reading, TALKING-conversation participation, TALKING- oral speech, WRITING) A1/2 Elementar user, B1/2 Independent user, C1/2 Experienced user

Languages:

Microsoft Office Illustrator, Adobe Indesign, Adobe Photoshop tridimensional modelling instruments: Rhinoceros, Sketchup construction documentation instruments: Arhicad, Autocad, Rhinoceros visualization instruments: V-ray, Artlantis, Blender, Maxwell parametric design instruments: Grasshopper, Processing

computer graphics instruments: Adobe

since January 2010:

The National Order of Architects from Romania since December 2013:

Licenced architect enrolled in The National Order of Architects from Romania since October 2011:

data-base maintenance, web-site design and maintenance, blog maintenance www.f-o-r.ro, www.ateliertrei.ro, www.arhitectura1tm.wordpress.com, www.anualadearhitectura.ro

WERKRAUM, community for creative people in Timișoara, RO

Computer skills:

Affiliations:

Alexandru Marian Cozma Contact adress: Memorandului 64 1C Timișoara 300206 Romania Mobile phone: +40 742 07 57 97 Office e-mail: alex.cozma@f-o-r.ro Personal e-mail: alexcozma.arch@gmail.com Web: www.f-o-r.ro Sex: Male Date of birth: 11.08.1984 Nationality: Romanian