L A U R A MIHALACHE P O R T F O L I O ARCHITECTURE & D E S I G N
Laura Mihalache DATE OF BIRTH: 28 | 09 | 1991 NATIONALITY: romanian EMAIL:lauraa.mihalache@yahoo.com
Curriculum Vitae PROFESIONAL EXPERIENCE
PICH AGUILERA ARCHITECTS - Architect Intern Spain, Barcelona
09 |2015 - 12|2015
UNIST - Research Internship 06|2015 - 08|2015 South Korea, Ulsan (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology)
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM "ION MINCU" 2010 - present Romania, Bucharest
KU LEUVEN, ASRO Architecture, Urbanism and Planning - 2013 - 2014 Belgium, Leuven
NATIONAL COLLEGE "MIRCEA CEL BATRAN", Romania, Constanta
2006 - 2010
WORKSHOPS
Hellastock - Towards and ephemeral city Greece, Athens
28|08 - 04 |09|2014
PUBLICATIONS "Muzeul national de istorie" - essay and photos in "Bucurestiul meu drag", issue 6|2013
SKILLS
AutoCAD | ArchiCAD | Revit | Sketch-Up
Adobe: Photoshop | InDesign | Illustrator
Hand drafting, drawing and modeling | photography
LANGUAGES ROMANIAN - native language SPANISH ENGLISH - speak fluently and ITALIAN read/write with high proficiency JAPANESE FRENCH - basic knowledge KOREAN
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basic basic basic basic
knowledge knowledge knowledge knowledge
04 |
| 05 SELECTED PROJECTS | DESIGN 01.
pag. 06-15
THE SHELL - COVERED SPACE Structure and materiality
02.
pag. 16-23
THE SYMBOL OF ARGAMUM Special structure
03.
pag. 24-35
THE PHILHARMONIE CULTURAL CENTRE OF MUSIQUE Connectivity through public spaces
04.
pag. 36-49
SOCIAL HOUSING
A segregation of community spaces
URBANISM STUDIO
05.
pag. 50-61
CHARLEROI, URBAN TISSUE CONTRADICTIONS
Strategies and plans for redevelopment
WORKSHOPS
06.
pag. 62-71
EPHEMERAL CITY HELLASTOCK - GREECE
Rethinking about the way of living
PHOTOGRAPHY
07
pag 72-77
PHOTOGRAPHY
Capturing stories and ideas
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01.|
THE SHELL
COVERED LOCATION:
SPACE not a specific place
YEAR OF STUDY: COORDINATOR:
1 Liana Iliu
08 | The project represents an experiment of playing with materials, shapes and space. Designed as a construction possible to be placed in different places, the project is becoming a space for cover, for meditation, a space where you can rest and feel protected. The shape, materiality and space make reference to the primordial type of shelter, to the traditional method of arranging the block stones, interpreted in a contemporary design. The massivity of the shelter is broken in this manner, creating a traslucent image, where the light is piercing through the holes between the tiles. Made from wood or stone, the construction can be easy and fast to built. The tiles being placed one on top of each other, the stability of the structure is given by the weigth of each of it and bonded with mortar (for stone) or metal connection pieces (for wood).
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MASS PLAN
10 |
The shell tries to emphasize the passage of time, a deconstruction of the sea shell into a shelter. The materiality will change and give a different image to the project, influenced by the issue of time, which gives sense to this project.
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02.|
SPECIAL
THE SYMBOL OF ARGAMUM STRUCTURE
LOCATION: Argamum, Jurilovca, Romania YEAR OF STUDY:
5
COORDINATOR: Daniela - Radulescu Andronic
18 |
CONTEXT There are many places that we forgot about, like an old picture forgotten in a book. Important is not that we forget, but the act of rediscovery neglected places, the things that make you remember and cherish the past. One such place is the Citadel Argamum, near the village Jurilovca. A city, a lake and a seashore are the ingredients of a steep site chosen for experimenting a public space that brings back the memories about forgotten traditions, landscape, history and the locals.
| 19 CONCEPT The project can be seen as a jouney, an instictual itinerary of an outside museum, where you are guided by paths, the citadel walls and intuition. The purpose is to become an icon, a signal for the place that not only helps locate yourself, but also the place, that it is used and apropiated by people through its function.
STRUCTURE The slenderness and translucence of the special structure makes reference to the fields of reeds. The structure is reinforced with horizontal wind-bracing.
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ARCHAEOLOGY SITE. The exhibition, placed underground, is a continuous space subdivided by inclosed boxes, where all the annexes are placed. It is complemented with zenithal lighting that creates an ethereal athmosphere inside.
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SIGNAL
The special structure rises from the underground/ buried exhibition space, becoming a symbol in the landscape, that reminds you about the old lighthouse typology. The building changes its form regarding the angle you see it along your itinerary to it, becoming a screen (that it could be used for projections), but also as a tower.
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03.|
THE PHILHARMONIE OF BUCHAREST
CULTURAL CENTRE OF MUSIQUE LOCATION:
Bulevard
Unirii, Bucharest, Romania
YEAR OF STUDY: COORDINATOR:
Daniela
5 -
Radulescu
Andronic
26 | URBANISM PROPOSAL The site is located in a strategic place for economy and cultural development in Bucharest, where the city council proposed: a palace of justice, a philharmonie with a park and an office and hotels area. The strategy was to establish a good CONNECTIVITY between different specific places in the area through PUBLIC and GREEN SPACES, the ones that Bucharest needs the most for its community development. In order to combine the public, private and the semiprivate space, each programme develops around a PLATFORM (green areas, squares, paved plazzas) placed at DIFFERENT LEVELS.
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28 | CONCEPT The project develops further the urbanism proposal and seeks to create a cultural centre for musique: a concert hall, an educational centre, a conferential centre and an exposition centre. The idea was to create different translucent volumes for each of it that are connected and are arranged around public spaces, in order to erase the boundaries between artists and spectators. The TRANSLUCENCE of the facade exposes the DINAMISM of the building and wants to attract the people outside to discover the musique.
The volumes are connected through a platform on the second level and arranged around public spaces: on the ground and underground level. From the ground level a green outside amphitheatre is descending to the building, that attracts people and transforms it in an outside concert hall.
The concert hall room can be visible through the diaphanous facade as it is covered by the main volume: a concrete box inside a translucent box.
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MASS PLAN
30 |31
2
1
GROUND FLOOR
UNDERGROUND FLOOR
3
4
-2
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04.|
SOCIAL HOUSING
TRANSITIONAL SPACES LOCATION:
street Mantuleasa, Bucharest, Romania
YEAR OF STUDY: COORDINATOR:
3 Iulia Stanciu
38 | The project is located in an old part of Bucharest, with single and collective houses. The main problems of the site, that we were confronting with, were the blind walls of the neighboring houses and the big difference of heights between the left and the right part. This influenced the design approach, the proposal trying to mediate this disagreement in height by creating a bigger volume on the higher part and three smaller volumes, that are closer to the single houses scale, on the lower side
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The relationship between the public, semi-public and private space is emphasized in the volumes arrangement and design. It is a gradual transition from the public to the private space of the dwelling. From a generous public space, large corridors (in form of a cone branch) lead you to a garden, a more private space of the dwellers, but also to the block staircases, that are all connected with each other on the ground level. The contact between the interior and the exterior space is highlighted by the use of the gardens and terraces. The idea of gardens for the community is used also for the apartments on the ground level, each of them having a private garden, and it is recalled for the apartments above, through terraces.
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05. |
CHARLEROI, URBAN TISSUE
CONTRADICTIONS LOCATION:
Charleroi,
YEAR OF STUDY:
Belgium 4
COORDINATOR: Guido Geenen, Yuri Gerrits Jan Vermeulen
52 |
CHARLEROI
| 53 CHARLEROI
URBAN DESIGN
Charleroi is a large industrial city in Belgium, located on the banks of river Samber, that lost its industrial glory and is suffering from major social, urban and economic problems. Nowadays, Charleroi is working to change the spiral of decline and to re-invent itself as a city of new industries.
The studio was primarily focused on the development of concrete strategies and a spatial model for the transformation of a comprehensible piece of urban tissue. It was wanted an exploration of housing typologies, different functions, public space, density and mobility issues. The main area of our focus was the industrial valley, a large area of deserted and empty land, divided in five sites where different approaches were needed for an urban renewal. The chosen site was divided in two opposite types of urban tissue: a dense, compact and detailed one with small houses and a vague, open land with big industrial buildings
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URBAN STRATEGY The site has two opposite scales, both with very poor qualities, that left without any intervention will cause an INTERNAL FRICTION between the BIG scale buildings on OPEN land and the SMALL, DENSE scale houses. In order to avoid that, the strategy follows to use these CONTRADICTIONS and sharpen this CONTRAST even more by DENSIFICATION in a controled way. THE CLEARING (emptying) The ambition of this project is to use the empty industrial areas and make them into new attractive spots that give something back to the forming tissue (the small houses village). It needs to be an OPENING in the denser, more enclosed urban tissue, a place where it finds a connection with the river and the community that will develop and densify around it. THE EDGE (reconverting) The idea is to keep the existing buildings and to adapt them by reconverting into something that would better fit the small scale and open spaces around it. A combination of small and big scale. THE CLUSTER (adding) These industrial platforms could develop around public spaces or urban seeds that could help the tissue grow into qualitative urban space with different functions (dwellings, commercial spaces, offices) that could coexist with the industry.
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THE CLEARING
THE EDGE
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THE CLUSTER
THE VALLEY
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06.|
EPHEMERAL CITY
HELLASTOCK-workshop LOCATION:
Athens, Greece
64 |
EPHEMERAL CITY The idea was to experiment with a single material or a combination of materials, resulting in the construction of an ephemeral city. This type of city lasts only as long as the workshops duration is and the participants experiment in fabricating their shelters for that time. Re-building from disaster is a proven need of the architecture practice as the world stands against unexpected events such as natural catastrophes. Experimentation over social habitation in extreme conditions is one of key features of HELLASTOCK 2014. EPHEMERAL HABITATION CELL The project offers an idea for an ephemeral habitation cell that combines the space of daily use for living and interaction with the more intimate spaces. It emphasize the collision between the public and private, a current issue in our contemporary city. Starting from the concept of the ephemeral wall, the spaces are defined by vertical, horizontal, rigid, fluid opened, closed walls. Thus to be said, the structure is separated into two main areas: a more private one and a public area, The private area provides hammocks or beds for sleep at different heights that are blocked visually by a long cascade fabric. Between the walls formed by the long fabric it is organized the living area: on the ground: swings, hammocks and a small library and above it a semi-public space to enjoy the greek sun. The fluidity and freedom of the fabric remind the traditional way of drying the laundry, outside, in the wind, that brings you back to the particular narrow streets of Greece.
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PRIVATE AREA
PRIVATE AREA d e li m i t a t i o n
sleeping reading
d e li m i t a t i o n
relaxation
COMMON AREA talking playing eating
COMMON AREA
COMMON AREA
VERTICAL USE OF THE SPACE GRADUAL TRANSITION FROM MORE PUBLIC TO A MORE PRIVATE SPACE
PRIVATE AREA
PRIVATE AREA
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The idea was inspired by Alexander Brodsky work “Your Prison�, that adopts a more existentialist standpoint. The installation consists of a small closed cell (3 m large and 4m long) where the walls are crossed with ladders connecting small platforms. On different levels are located pieces of furniture which support the basic acts of daily living: cooking, sleeping, washing, studying. The daily life of an isolated individual is dissected through the fragmentation of his activities in minimal units, the automatism of living is exposed in the shape of a prison cell.
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07.|
PHOTOGRAPHY
74 |
R h y t h m i c i t y LOCATION:
Knokke ,
Belgium
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C
o
s
m
o
g
o
n
y
LOCATION: Jeju Island , South Korea
76 |
Changing
of
seasons
LOCATION:
Leuven , Belgium
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Space LOCATION:
warp
Leuven , Belgium