NAME
Veronica Iulia Popescu
BIRTH
27 | 07 | 1987
CO N TAC T
veronica.i.popescu@gmail.com +40 721 27 09 87
E D U C AT I O N MASTER DEGREE 2010-2013 | UAUIM /ROMANIA (accredited as RIBA Part II) BACHELOR DEGREE 2006-2013 | UAUIM /ROMANIA (accredited by RIBA and ARACIS)
WORK SITU STUDIO | BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11/2011-03/2012 Intern position | www.situstudio.com RE-ACT NOW | BUCHAREST, ROMANIA 07-11/2012 Intern position | www.re-act-now.ro
BACCALAUREATE DEGREE 2006 | Ion Neculce /ROMANIA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE SM NITULESCU 2006 /ROMANIA ART SCHOOL ST SAVA 1994-2001 / BUCHAREST
EXTRA-CURRICULAR DYNAMIC FIELDS/2013 | P A R A M E T R I C A [ D I G I F A B S C H O O L ] |RO
Panel critique by Partick Schumacher Tutors / Hooman Talebi, Farshad Mehdi’Zadeh, Arian Hakimi Nejad, Mohsen Marizad
INTERACTIVE DESIGN-DIGITAL FABRICATION/2012 | M O D U L A B |RO
Tutor / Paul Popescu
DIGITALMED PARAMETRIC/2011 | C o - d e - i T / D i g i t a l M E D |IT
Tutors / Andrea Graziano, Alessio Erioli
QUESTIONABLE TRADITIONS/ 2011 | T _ A _ I F a b L a b |RO
Tutors / Tudor Cosmatu, Andrei Raducanu(Zoster), Irina Bogdan
WALL-SQUARED SURFACES/2010 | L A N o n S I T E / I N / A r c h |IT
Tutors / Monika Wittig, Luis E. Fraguada
GRASSHOPPER WORKSHOP/ 2010 | T _ A _ I F a b L a b |RO
Tutors / Tudor Cosmatu, Andrei Raducanu(Zoster), Irina Bogdan
ADVANCED DIGITAL DESIGN/2010 | H i p e r b o d y T U D e l f t |RO
Tutors / Han Feng, Ran Bergman
REACTIVE PARAMETRIC SURFACES/ 2010 | U A U I M |RO NEW VIEW INTO THE CITYSCAPE/2007 | R I G A T U |LV
S K I L L S 1 to 5 RHINOCEROS GRASSHOPPER AUTOCAD ILLUSTRATOR
5 4 5 4
GOOGLE EARTH PRO ARC GIS 10 WORD EXCELL
3 2 4 3
INDESIGN PHOTOSHOP V-RAY RHINO-CAM ARDUINO
4 5 4 3 3
POWERPOINT PROCESSING SKETCHUP SPIRIT 15
3 2 4 4
DRAWING CLAY SCULPTURE WRITING
5 5 5
OIL PAINTING ARDUINO ELECTRONICS
4 2
LANGUAGES ROMANIAN native / ENGLISH fluent (ielts 7.5) FRENCH intermediate (11 years) / GERMAN basic (A2) ITALIAN low proficiency
ACCOMPLISHMENTS -Graduated the Master Degree Program top 2%(top 10/250) / published in RIBA Catalogue 2013 / highest jury rating. -Won a full scholarship to attend the Integrated Bachelor and Master Program at UAUIM/RO ranking 8th(3rd) out of 800 candidates at the exam organized by UAUIM.
CONTENTS
C A S I N O S I LO I N T R O / C O N V E R S I O N | MASTER DIPLOMA PROJECT INTERAC TIVE FIELDS| WORKSHOP SITU STUDIO| WORK EXPERIENCE RE-AC T NOW!| WORK EXPERIENCE 40-25-65-100| COMPETITION G R A P H I C S | DRAWING SKILLS P R E P S C H O O L S M N I T U L E S C U | DRAWING SKILLS ECOTONE| WORKSHOP WISHBONE| WORKSHOP
CASINO SILO INTRO | CONVERSION
Title / Master Graduation Project | 2012-2013 Tutor / Prof. Dorin Č˜tefan | Asst. Dan Dinoiu Other / Published | Best Projects 2013\ RIBA Exhibited | Best Diploma Projects 2013\ UAUIM | City 2.0 Models\ TedxBucharest Objective / In 2007 an urban development project is forwarded to the City Hall of Constanta(RO) asking for the functional conversion of the Old Harbor/Northern Area of the Commercial Harbor of Constanta(RO). This proposal states about the fact that massive development in the South Area drained the Old Harbor, making it impossible for ships to acces it. Furthermore, the Old Harbor is placed close to the city’s old center and this is making it impossible for it to be accesed by large cars due to traffic interdictions. Not being able to receive ships or trucks, the Northern area of the Harbor can no longer satisfy the requirements it was built for and therefore a functional change must occur.
Solution /
SOFT APPROACH
The first step is researching the site proposed for conversion and understanding its history, qualities and discrepancies. In this aspect two main processes that influenced its development can be pointed out: change and accumulation. (accumulation)The site aimlessly gathered buildings and habits. (change)This process of gathering was influenced only by extreme changes that occurred periodically on many different levels-blue prints, functions, politics, water level. Accumulation is fundamental for soft approach trials. Solution | The sites diversity will be accepted and a non-invasive link that adds meaning to the stack of layers found on site will be added. Later in the project the focus falls upon the area of the Old Silos. This is an industrial complex of 3 identical buildings whose fake blank facades housed inside some of the first reinforced concrete silo installations built by the famous romanian engineer Saligny. This site now finds itself next to the navy yard, in an area that will still suffer in the future from industrial pollution. Its function will also change from private(industrial) to public, but due to its location this change represents a more complex decision. Solution | The introverted character of this complex is a ccepted and to this functions that link people(the public) to the site are added. The pursued function would be that of casino. This playful program is able to attract large numbers of people and keep them inside an enclosed immersive environment, generating a narrative journey that is delivered in a seductive manner.
Because the way the British used of the harbor-cereal transportation-was a promising economical activity, the Romanian authority decided to continue using the harbor for commercial purposes and even to maximize this profit by building a new bigger harbor here.
CHANGE
NAIVE | IMPOSSIBLE | DANGEROUS 1881-1886 engineers(Charles Hartley | O. Franzius | Voisin Bey)presented projects with unsuccessful designs for the development of the area. Around 1880 Romania regains authority over Constanta Harbour against the british.
SOFT APPROACH follows the italian theory behind weak thinking and forte thinking (found in contemporary writings as soft thinking vs hard thinking). In order keep the main characteristic of the site, that is accumulation, I avoid the reductive process of conceptual(hard) thinking, and decide to use a soft thinking process. In the way that Umberto Eco talks about the difference between dictionary definitions and encyclopedia definitions the accumulation of differences on site is considered to be a frame(definition)and not an abstraction of its character-or conceptual reduction. Soft approach is delivering a narrative - in this aspect it is a method of structuring communication between space and an individual. In this matter soft approach is considered to be here: seduction. This subject is the focus of my dissertation thesis, that accompanies this project and is entitled: Seduction from the perspective of scripted spaces.
Drained by the development of the area around it, these days the Old harbor keeps accumulating layers of materiality, function, infrastructure, value, information.
CHANGE
ACCUMUL
These layers neither support its commercial functions nor they outline a new function, therefore large areas become derelict.
1876-1939-2013 The harbor developed excessively in the south area where the Black Sea meets the Danube. This process drained the Old Harbor and stopped any commercial activities in the area.
FUNCTIO
CHANGE|NO CHANGE The area switches its status from private to welcoming. Buildings that are kept accommodate to new functions without losing their architectural or historical value. A turistic path emerges around the old bay.
CHANGE|NO CHANGE Pragmatic redesign for the Old Harbour involve both a MACRO and a MICRO vision. For the first tha site reaches a NARRATIVE COURSE, while for the second one it becomes an IMMERSIVE JAR.
MACROINFO
ACCUMULATION
ACCUMULATION | LAYERS
1888-1900 the virtual design of the harbor changes with every new engineer, by means of addition.
POSSIBLE | MOLDABLE 1888-1893 engineer I. B. Cantacuzino forwards blueprints for a commercial harbour where ships could be easily operated.
AUCTIONED | LOST 1896 the french enterprise Hallier wins the auction to start constructions of the harbour. 1897/8 Hallier is sued by the gouvernment for not respecting the contract .
BY CHANCE | 1900 after the trial A. Saligny takes over the construction site and builds the Old Harbour/ Northern Area. HISTORY LAYERS
LATION
ON
ACCUMULATION | LAYERS
In 2013, without its main function, the site is an aimless accumulation of layers. The multitude of incentives builds up a narrative characteristic but the story of the site needs a plot.
MATERIALITY
INFRASTRUCTURE
HEIGHT
TIME
VALUE
SOUND PROCESS LAYERS
IMMERSIVE JAR | CHANGE AND ADDITION
The solution for the MICRO area of the 3 Silos is to keep the characteristics of a box, but instead of housing a cereal depositing proces, they house the narrative of an immersive environment where people imagine the feeling of feeling of mass afiliation:
CASINO | COMMERCIAL CENTER | ART GALLERY | OFFICES | SPA AND FITNESS | HOTEL.
MACRO -NARRATIVE COURSE | Layers of opportunities write a scenario for the functional conversion of the site: VALUE | VICINITY | ACCESS.
MICRO INFO
IMMERSIVE JAR | Because of the vicinity to the navy yard
the site of the Silos remains INTROVERTED. It receives an immersive casket function: CASINO. A pavilion is designed to guide its 9 existing entries.
SOLUTION | LAYERS
ACCUMULATION
GUIDING ENTRANCE
Site Plan Location diagrams | A
6 ground lev
CHANGE + ACCUMULATING BY ADDITION [MACRO SCALE]
The site of the Old Harbor changes its function from commercial to turistic and its character from introverted to extroverted. This conversion is designed by adding layers of encyclopedia difference(in compairing commercial to turistic) : museum | casino | event spaces | bars/restaurants | ...
SITE SCENARIO | SITE NARRATIVE
E | PAVILION
ACCUMULATING BY ADDITION MICRO SCALE
3X3X3|
each silo has 3 main exits : vel simmetrical exits and 3 trestle entrances 20m above ground
TENSILE STRUCTURE MODEL STUDY
COMPUTER SIMULATION
3X3X3+1
the need for guidance is solved by adding one more entrance :
FOCUS [MULTIFUNCTIONAL] ENTRANCE PAVILION
The subteranean parking is meant to be monumental. Its structure penetrates the soil and lits up the landscape outside of the casino, giving the impresion of an electric sea scape.
ENTRANCE PAVILION // TRAIN STATION THE SAIL
PARKING // SECOND GUIDING ENTRANCE THE ELECTRIQUE SEA
ENTRANCE PAVILION // THE SAIL AND THE ELECTRIC SEA TEST STRUCTURE
ENTRANCE PAVILION // THE SAIL AND THE ELECTRIC SEA LAST STRUCTURE
FUNCTION DIAGRAN| CASE STUDY BELLAGIO Casino resort function studies revealed that conference spaces, commercial units restaurants and leisure activities occupy most of the space. The Casino function occupys at most 20% of all space and focus.
AXONOMETR FUNCTION STUDIES There are two main characteristics, of the site and of the program, that this study takes into account: 1.[location]-due to the sites vicinity with the Navy Yard, it is desired that the visitors would be drawn by the functions to this site and absorbed by them inside | encapsulated in a narrative jar. 2.[buildings]-due to the existing architecture(but also fit for the program), functions should not require any natural light.
INTERMEDIATE SOLUTION FOR FUNCTION LAYERS | AXONOMETRY
FUNCTION STUDY FOR THE 3 SILOS | SECTION CASE
The 3 buildings are linked by the Casino at basement level and by two suspended passages at the last two upper floors-one old and one new. Each of the three(x2) ground entrances leads to a particular function: conference center, hotel lobby/spa fitness center, museum. The suspended old trestle gives acces to the commercial spaces that link the buildings at the 3rd floor. The new suspended passage links the hotel rooms at the last floor-where natural light is provided.
CASINO casino,sportsgambling, restaurants,viplounge. // On this floor the caged birds open. People gamble under their cupola, delivering the sound that these structures reverberate all through the building.
OLD STRUCTURE CONVERSION || STRUCTURE SOLUTION
CASINO BASEMENT DETAIL
SOLUTION
Most of the columns will be preserved and protected. The tubes will be cut into beams. Cages will be designed to cut 3d sections through the entire space in order to give light and expand space.
SILO OLD STRUCTURE
The old structure is a honeycomb grid with reinforced concrete columns on 3 corners of each hexagon. Through each hexagon a thin walld hexagonal tube is designed.
OLD SILO SYSTEM
Cereals would come by train and enter on ground level through a concrete tunnel. Cereals were droped in the basement and mechanically carried up to the last floor. Here a cantilever arm would pour them into the desired hexagonal tube(tubes). Here they would be temporary stored and later charged on ships by using the trestle.
CAGE DEVELOPMENT | GEOMERY LOGIC
SPACE GENERATED BY STRUCTURAL DECISIONS
TUBES | COLUMNS | COLUMNS AND BEANS Design development process.
THE CONCEPT OF A CAGED BIRD IMMERSION REINTERPRETED
PLAN / SECTION | CASINO BASEMENT DETAIL
CASINO // RESTAURANT PERSPECTIVE VIEW Underground link betweenoldsilos,where the ceiling is an addition of cupolas thatgeneratefocuspoints insidegamblingrooms.
CASINO THEME !
IMMERSION The immersive environment depends on two main components: the helmet and the artificial narrative. The blank helmet is a promise that reality is easy to reach again. The theme inside creates the wow effect as Thalden Boyd Emery explains it. It makes people travel large distances in order to experience preconceived appearances.
THE CONCEPT The mechanized jungle idea lies in the complexity achieved by the structural effort. The caged birds [sound structures] create an event through the entire building. They open up into artificial spheres at casino level and generate the continous flows and virtual environment.
THE FLOOR | THE CEILING MECHANIZED JUNGLE | ARTIFICIAL SPHERE The excess of visual information given by the floor influences the visitor to look up, so as not to lose himself in an absorbing environment. As he looks up he sees the artificial sphere. This shape is always present as its influence lies in generating continuous circular flows.
PLANS OF THE CONVERSION OF SILO NO.2(OUT OF 3) GROUND FLOOR TO 4TH(AND LAST) FLOOR
SECTION DETAIL TROUGH THE BUILDING The old facade is reinforced with a metal structure. The columns are dressed in a metal envelope. 6 types of new column shapes appear in accordance with a new layer of reinforcing metal beams.
Two structure solutions are available: 1.tube sections become beams. 2.tube sections become visible beams and a layer of metal beams placed higher reinforces this structure. Explanation for making the second choice: HVAC systems will be hidden in a fake ceiling. due to this technical necessity and due to flooring/ceiling techniques, beams will be hid and technically used. having the tube sections under the fake ceilings level and lighting this space will give conceptual perspective to the historical meaning of the old building.
SOUND ON SITE | DESIGN PARAMETER
In 2009 IDOM Proiectare si Consultanta measured the sound amplitude in all areas of the city of Constanta and compiled the information in a set of sound maps. The site of the project is, according to these maps, surrounded by a loud street that creates a limit of traffic noise. Inside the site the noise is very different but still very powerfull, and that of industry. Delimited by sounds of traffic on one side and inside the sound of industry, the third sound influence on site is that of the sea. Sound is considered the most powerfull parameter of this site.
DESIGN PROCESS
In order to breack the longitudinal flow and make people stop and wonder around, events are added on the way. The caged bird becomes an ultimate scale for immersion.
XENAKIS INDUSTRIAL SEA MOZART VARESE METASTASIS NOISE NOISE SYMPHONYNO.40 AMERIQUES | gh firefly personal definition that generates 3d representations from played music/sounds | Symphony no.40 was composed for the opening of a casino in Spiegelgase. Music becomes part of the immersive environment as pulse, vibration and charisma.Varese researches new dimensions of sound[color, reverberation]. Xenakis follows Vareses steps and designs along Le Corbusier, The Philips Pavilion. This building is called by Corbu : A poem in a bottle- a subtle definition for an immersive environment.
The caged bird is the result of a series of studies regarding the way sound reverberates and the means by which its frequency can be multiplied.
CAGED BIRD DESIGN
Process used for designing the caged bird. The program used uas ghs firefly. I designed a definition that would generate a large number of reverberations in accordance to the position of sound sources.
ENTRANCE SILO NO.2 // THE BIRCH FOREST AND THE CAGED BIRD
LONGITUDINAL SECTION SILO NO.2 MIDDLE BIULDING +
UNDERGROUND LINK [CASINO SPACE]
PLAN SILO NO 2
TRANSVERSAL SECTION SILO NO1+NO2+NO3 UNDERGROUND LINK [CASINO SPACE]
FLOOR PLANS BUILDING SILO NO.1
PERSPECTIVE VIEW
OF THE STRUCTURE TROUGH TWO OF THE 4 CAGES
FLOOR PLANS BUILDING SILO NO.3
SECTION
In order to capture the sites personality the 1/2000 model was built out of metal. A copper pigment was added to a resin and applyed to an aluminum sheet, due to patina characteristics of this new material. Resin application techniques were researched in order to get the best developable site outcome:complex but easy to add on.
MATERIAL Circulations were ingraved onto the final material. The engraving was cleaned with acetone, revealing the aluminum sheet. While walking around the model, light reflects on the aluminum lines giving the impresion of movement. This technique keeps the site to one material.
TECHNIQUE Houses white of plastic are added to the site. The urban tissue becomes easy to detect and analyze. Discontinuities become relevant at the same time.
ADDITION The sea, same material as the site, is sprayed with vert de gris, an industrial acid.
TECHNIQUE The solution is added on the site. This is a way of creatively exaggerating the idea of addition.
ADDITION
Objective / Generating controllable wind fields with uncontrollable data. Soft approach, in opposition to “hard” approach, is a walk through all the possible steps of a system. Hard thinking uses preset codes to operate systems. Facing the complex issue of dynamic fields without the know how necessary to manipulating and interpreting data, we turned towards soft thinking, a way of thinking apparently common to women. In a soft, trial and error process, we used small interventions, observed the output of these actions, came back, retraced steps and slowly moved forward, sometimes in a complicated way without having a perspective on the final result of these actions. The small trials-our tests : plastic bags, plastic cups, rubber bands, paper sheets, these were all tested under a constant(vortex) flow of a fan. It was easy to observe how the fan pushed objects out of its dynamic field, the vortex, and the simple idea of having something partially anchored that would be pushed out and hanged in this new environment was only natural. This idea had a visual identity similar to that of a telescope. The powerful image of a telescope, drove us in our soft approach towards the shape of plastic cups. The cup became, because of it’ lightness and versatility (shape, texture, price, availability) the perfect unit to test. At the end we did not find out the most efficient use of this material/shape, because we never had a hard perspective view on the outcome, we adjusted according to small achievements we reached while building on a thin seductive structure of: what if?
WORKSHOP 2013
Tools/
INTERACTIVE FIELDS
Rhinoceros + Grasshopper + Low tech fabrication + Laser cutting
Involvement/ Concept | Speech |Text | Fabrication | Presentation
Panel critique with Patrick Schumacher. Tutors/HoomanTalebi,FarshadMehdi’Zadeh,ArianHakimiNejad,Mohsen Marizad Featured/ http://www.archilovers.com/p98671/Interactive-Fields http://www.archdaily.com/421143/ http://metropotam.ro/La-zi/Prototipuri-inovative-la-Dynamic-Fields Published/ Zeppelin(http://e-zeppelin.ro/)|AtelieruldeProiectare(http://www. adep.ro/) | Arhitext(http://www.arhitext.com/) Team / Marjan Mostavi, Razvan Vara, Razvan Grigorescu, Mohamad
Raouf, Mircea Mihai, Andreea Visan, Victor Pricop, Oana Muresan, Ion Krivenco, Simona Ioana Nastasoiu, Ioana Diaconu, Andreea Brustan, Raluca Becheru, Veronica Popescu.
WORK EXPERIENCE
SITU STUDIO W W W.SITUSTUDIO.COM
Position / Intern Nov2011 |March2012 During this four months internship I had the opportunity to work on competitions, research projects, design projects and presentations, while having contact with actual fabrication techniques and fabrication management and logic.
Type Involvement Reference INFO
COMPETITIONENTRY SUBMITTED COLLAGE VISUALS AND PLANS
BAM(www.bam.org) anniversary competition | The competition proposes five possible sites around BAMs main building where different events are going to be hosted during the anniversary festival. Situ Studio proposed the conversion of their Brooklyn Museum installation, reOrder. // My involvement in this project was in assembling collages of the benches designed by Situ for the reOrder project inside the new suggested environments. These collages expressed the new ways in which the sitting elements were going to be re-used by the public and their placement inside the space. The collages were accompanied by plan views and were used in Situ’s proposal for thecompetition.
Type Involvement INFO
Type Involvement
CONCEPT FACADE DESIGN GH DEFINITION|RHINO GEOMETRY|PSD VISUALISATIONS Situ concept for the facade of the building that was going to house the fossil research project was to design a grid of panels that would be milled with a CNC out of the rocks found on site. I generate a series of patterns using Grasshopper and high resolution fossil images.
FABRICATION CNC CUT FILES PREPARATION| RHINONEST DISPLAY| INVOLVEMENT IN UNROLL DESIGN OF GHTEAM DEFINITION
Reference
http://www.situfabrication.com/works/architecture/ virgin-atlantic-jfk-clubhouse
INFO
Contribution on a fabrication project for a couch inner structure-designed as xy ribs.
//image:www.passengerterminaltoday.com
Type Involvement Reference
Type Involvement Reference INFO
SITU RESEARCH \ VISUALIZATION PROJECT DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT| REPRESENTATION RESEARCH
http://situresearch.com/works/forensic-oceanography-report http://www.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FO-report.pdf
SITU RESEARCH \ VISUALIZATION PROJECT GH DEFINITION | RHINO GEOMETRY | SUBMITTED VISUALS
http://www.situresearch.com/works/syria-torture-centers-revealed http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/03/syria-torture-centers-revealed A GH definition that allowed any user to change the next parameters: cell size/cell height/number of people. This program was used to recreate the testimonies of Syrian prisoners and to compare their detainment with the international standards for imprisonment. A number of this visuals was used by the Human Rights Watch in their report: Syria Torture Centers Revealed(see reference link).
Type Involvement
DESIGN FOLDABLE CHRISTMAS CARD DESIGN
WORK EXPERIENCE
RE-ACT NOW W W W.RE-AC T-NOW.RO
Position / Intern 2012 During this four months internship I had the opportunity to work on competitions, research projects, design projects and presentations, while having contact with actual fabrication techniques and fabrication management and logic.
Type Involvement
COMPETITION ENTRY OFFICE DESIGN 3D GEOMETRY| GH DEFINITION:CAFETERIA FORREST/FACETED MEETING ROOM /IGLOO RIBS MEETING ROOM
Type Involvement Reference INFO
COMPETITION ENTRY/ HIGHWAY DESIGN GH DEFINITION | RHINO GEOMETRY | PSD AND VRAY RHINO RENDER ON SUBMITTED VISUALS
http://www.re-act-now.ro/master-planning/a23-highway-vienna/ Each segment of a23 highway was designed differentley in order to create a scenography that would engage the drivers. Light fixtures, road pannels and tunnels were designed in this aspect.
Type Involvement Reference INFO
COMPETITION ENTRY/ URBAN DESIGN CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT | GH DEFINITION | RHINO GEOMETRY | SUBMITTED VISUALS
http://www.re-act-now.ro/master-planning/railway-area-lahti-finland/ Finland’s city Lahti has developed under typical russian urban influence: the railroad was considered as the most important asset and its strategical positioning didn’t take into account the fact that it ended up in dividing the city in two. One of these two halfs became a powerful cultural hub with a large amount of outdoor attractions and bars/restaurants while the other remained a dormitory town. The competition set the goul to reunite the two halfs coverting the border that separates them. The concept for the railway area and station was to create a network of interest points and their links that penetrate underground and above ground this border. In this way the point of attraction would actually be moved to the railway area while at the same time connections between the two halfs would become easy to use and find.
Ideas competition for the railway area of central Lahti
Ideas competition for the railway area of central Lahti
bridge
04
„(...)how we got from here to there...”1 I PACKED MY BAG AND IN IT I PUT...* ...I packed my bag and in it I put all that I could carry on a flight back home. Upon my arrival I found out that my bag got lost on the way. I lost everything I had decided to take with me on a deserted island. RE-LOCATE ACCUMULATION FETISH AS FUNDAMENT Manifesto: Fundamental is not the concept or the process but the accumulation from which these two are born.
Abstract: In an academic exercise to understand communities that are dealing with
RELOCATE A C C U M U L AT I O N FETISH AS FUNDAMENT
Title / Competition entry for 2014 Biennale di Venetia Team / Laura Dumitrescu, Marjan Mostavi, Dragos Mila, Mircea Mihai, Veronica Popescu
extreme poverty, students are encouraged to take photographs of the interiors of the shelters and to list an inventory of the objects they find. From this inventory students can later approximate for how long the owner has been living on the streets and the number of re-locations he went through. The first time an individual is evicted, he tends to carry with him as many possessions from his former home as possible. These objects are usually placed inside the temporary shelter in accordance to the way they were placed in the abandoned house. The illegal shelter may provide housing for a few months or years, but as soon as it’s discovered by the police, its owner is forced to leave and search for a new place. At his second re-location, the individual is going to own and take with him less objects than he did previously. The inventory is going to decrease with every forced re-location.
To use Argumentum ad absurdum in order to generate a theory of the subject that forte thinking methods would be unable to provide. To have an encyclopedic definition in stead of a dictionary one.
40+25
For the past 25 years the tendency was to strive to move out of the late regime’s apartment units. Economy and globalization influenced the Romanian society in such a way that today 1 out of 6 people works abroad.
Objective /
40
During a time period of 40 years Romanians were forced to re-locate due to the politics regarding the urban planning of the time. Many families have been moved more than once. This re-location implied in most cases that a person had little time to gather any possessions and move to the new location. It also implied most of the times a lifestyle change. In this aspect, many home owners, raising crops and farm animals had to move to apartment buildings. Animals and crops were abandoned. Many objects were left behind for they couldn’t be carried and wouldn’t fit in the new space anyway.
100
Romanians are still influenced by re-location. As a group they were forced to chose from their inventory the possessions they would carry with them. They had to decide what to abandon as they moved in order to travel lightly.
The fundamentals of Romanian society (influencing and) influenced by architecture for the past 100 years are listed in the accumulation of possessions people had to save and move. Globalization influences people to travel lightly. This is the story of how we start a journey with a luggage that we later consume and abandon in order to keep moving: how we got from here to there (although Zeno’s paradox might state that we were just standing the whole time).
Exhibition Description:
We propose a narrative.
The story starts with a small container filled with objects that seem to belong to someone. It contains memories and worthless objects along useful ones. The container is full and too small for the amount of objects gathered. For this reason the objects are piled up and stacked. The visitor steps into the next container. This second container has less objects than the first. Most of them have well established functions and very little of them are decor. The next room is even lighter. In the third container all useless objects disappear and a small inventory of objects can be listed. The last container is nearly empty. It has only the most functional objects that a human can extract from the first room’s inventory. Standing inside the fourth container you are not able to imagine what lies in the first room, but inside the first room you can think about the combination of objects that lies in the fourth container as well as many other possibilities. The accumulation of objects and information inside the first room is the fundamental from which concepts are developed. The conceptual process will always perform a reductive action upon the fundamental that started it.
Then, we propose a game.
While the visitor steps out of the narrative, he encounters a large stack of objects. He is encouraged to pick from this pile the objects he would carry with him in a similar process as that described earlier. Carrying these objects, becoming conscious of their weight and shape, he enters the second pavilion. Here he would have to move from one room to the other with as many objects as he wants to carry. Every opening between containers inside the second pavilion is shaped so as to create obstacles that would stop visitors from carrying objects from one container to the other. Visitors would have to abandon objects on the way. Each end of the day is going to give document-able insights about how people choose and handle objects.
Strategy details: All the objects used in the exhibition are going to be gathered in a
public auction, therefore they exist in reality as well as in the virtual space. The objects respect a preset inventory. Their functionality, the way they appear and disappear inside the containers was decided by running a public survey and asking people to grade how they feel about this objects importance.
CALABALAC/BELONGINGS
The objects contained in the inventary might differ, their appearence is partially controllable. We keep a principle that controls the process of re-location and elimination inside the pavilion. This visualizations explain the way we use our public survey in order to create transitions.
“An ecotone is a transition area between two biomes or different patches of the landscape. It may be narrow or wide, and it may be local (the zone between a field and forest) or regional (the transition between forest and grassland ecosystems). An ecotone may appear on the ground as a gradual blending of the two communities across a broad area, or it may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotone)
The beautiful coast area of Vietri sul Mare is a natural habitat where three types of landscape meet. The sea meets a fine strip of sand that makes a transition to a sharp tall rock cliff. As the level of the water rises every year the sand strip gets thinner, swallowed by the sea. In the same time that the sand strip collapses into the sea it causes the rocky cliff to crack and degrade. The sea is a powerful medium housing a rich aquatic ecosystem. The sand beach has it’s own poor, but just because of this aspect, important ecosystem and so does the rock cliff. These three ecosystems have to negotiate their existence. While this negotiation takes place, the last link to suffer from the conflict between the three mediums is the small town located on the top plateau.
WORKSHOP 2011
D I G I TA L M E D PA R A M E T R I C
Co-de-iT / DigitalMED
Tutors/Andrea Graziano, Alessio Erioli Tools/
Rhinoceros + Grasshopper + Laser cutting
Involvement/ Concept | Speech | Fabrication | Presentation Team project.
We generated a vector grid using the cliff deformations as a parameter.
Transition, from one medium to another becomes a gradient of intermediate states. If the gradient is “broken�, the equilibrium between the three disappears. Studying this issue, we were able to determine two critical points. These are areas where erosion started and therefore areas where an artificial intervention is required in order to reestablish the equilibrium. Here the negotiation has to be take place again under different-human established-circumstances.
Our first approach was to look at the cliff and establish the areas where the erosion was in a critical state and also areas were erosion could become an issue in the future. For this we used Grasshopper to determine the points in the cliff where the rocks orientation was most negative. These are areas where rocks hang over the sea. These are problematic areas in most cases. We used the location of these critical areas as a parameter in the further development of our project. It decided upon the location, shape and development of our geometry.
To study the possibilities in which the second type of element could behave inside our vector grid, we searched for ways to link randomly or by conditioning vicinities between elements. One face of the border area of one element defines the neighbor elements face it meets. The elements are more that a collection of similar geometries, they become a system of elements that condition each others existence and appearance. This is a concept of internal negotiation inside a closed system. We search for a differentiation between a system and an object, between a series of actions that are conditioned by the parameters of their environment, actions that search for self-organization and a subjective response to a complex issue that materializes into a geometry.
WORKSHOP 2011
QUESTIONABLE TRADITIONS
T_A_I FabLab
Tutors/Tudor Cosmatu, Andrei Raducanu(Zoster), Irina Bogdan Published/ ARHITECTURA 1906(http://arhitectura-1906.ro/) Exhibited/ Anual Arch Expo Bucharest 2011|+Public presentation Tools/
Rhinoceros + Grasshopper + Laser cutting
Involvement/ Concept | Fabrication | Speech | Presentation Team project.
DRAWINGS PREP SCHOOL SM.NITULESCU 2005-2006 Tutor / Serban Nitulescu Title / apprentice Studies/drawing | geometry | history Objective / Prep school for the 2006 admission exam for the Master Integrated Bachelor Diploma Program at the University of Architecture and Urban Planning “Ion Mincu�, Bucharest. I scored the 3rd best result at this exam out of 800 candidates and was listed the 8th best overall score and received a full 6 years scholarship to attend the bachelor and master program.
GRAPHICS 2013 Title / Graphic Means(tools | process) / Ink on paper | rapidograph ink free hand Objective / To use imagined stereotypes and a simple freehand line in order to recreate events and identities. Compulsive drawing is learning discipline and patience while persevering on an idea.
Thank you!