Normal of Bucharest

Team: project developed within the framework of TUB project, and was managed by Alex Axinte and Cristi Borcan (studioBASAR), together with Adrian Soare, Eliza Yokina and Magda Vieriu (SYAA).
Year:
2008

01_sar_city_introWhat is beautiful now in Bucharest, better than years ago or what will be beautiful sometime in the future? A whole world of dull places, haunted and forgotten, where normal, marginal and hidden events are rather avoided by the haste to develop the city and quietly waits to be wandered. Going on with the means applied for Graz the Usual City, the Normal section selects, following an affectionate process of mapping, ten hidden places which are ignored, and places them on a trail. Seductive and mysterious, funny or occasional, the ten stops turn locals into tourists of their own city, while outside visitors get used to the unofficial city: left to wander the Utopia, Nostalgia, Dreams or Fears in a possible Bucharest.

Camping

Location: Ion Creanga Street, from Rahova beer factory, Sabinelor Street towards Piata Arsenalului.

camping1At the base of a massive line of apartment buildings a silver trailer is parked on the sidewalk near a garage and a fence. The trailer has an open counter under a yellow tarpaulin supported by four metallic pillars of about three meters. A red cooling box sits right at the entrance, its back facing the street. In the shade of the tarpaulin on the stone edge of the fence, snacks are served, people standing in a queue talk fervently, decisions are taken concerning the strategy in the second half, somebody asks if you have a light and generally people wait for an upshot.

POSTCARDURI_NORMAL_VERSO.cdrThe Suspended Garden

Location: the patio inside the passage, Eforie Street from Brezoianu Street, up on Eforie Street, then through the passage.

gradina1You climb several steps, go through the dark passage and you reach a patio full of light and waiting cars. The patio is surrounded by windows, doors, gates, balconies, stairs, passages, platforms, tall fences and fire walls. Somewhere in a corner, between a wall and a building you may climb a green stage placed on a concrete platform, where you find a house, a tree, a carpet bar and a couple of air holes which can be used as places to sit. The house has two doors and three small windows, all under a metallic grid. It looks like the garden grew on the wall of a former fortification facility, long abandoned. Or there is only a garage underneath and in the house above, the drivers sit waiting.

POSTCARDURI_NORMAL_VERSO.cdrThe project is composed of ten postcards with hidden and everyday places from Bucharest.

corbeni_night

gang_victoriei

hanul