My Place - At the Steps
Organizers: Cecilia Frâncu, Dan Manea, Alin Voitescu
Tutors: Alex Axinte, Tudor Elian, George Marinescu, Alin Voitescu
Team: Bogdan Nicolae, Hartia Corina, George Cristea, Irina Neguţoiu, Grancea Ciprian, Nan Mihaela, Gheorghe Ana-Maria, Călin Simona, Toma Minodora, Fugulin Elena, Vrânceanu Ştefan, Manolache Esmeralda, Bocalu Denisa.
Partners: City of Sinaia, Friends Association Sinaia-Athis-Mons, Association of architecture Sinaia-Busteni-Azuga, Association Grenoble-Isère-Roumanie, Foster Home Sinaia.
Location: alley Take Ionescu, Sinaia
Period: 19-20 July 2012
Within the project ‘My Meeting Place - A Different Place’ organized by Cecilia Frâncu a public space intervention workshop took place, attended by children from the Foster Home, Sinaia. The intention of the workshop was the temporary assembly of a common space, involving the youngsters.
The location of the workshop was the Take Ionescu alley, a pedestrian stepped street, in fact a shortcut on the serpentine routes that are climbing the slopes of the city, a space of the locals in a city of tourists, quite a peripheral and forgotten place. The access to the Foster Home is from the alley.
We choose to activated the upper part of the steps, a former small access road now deserted, where we cut the tall grass and transformed it into a temporary amphitheater, with stage and platforms made from pallets, sitting places and projection screen.
Here, after a day of working or walking around the city, took place each evening ad-hoc shows, where until waiting the evening projection, the audience was engaged in a rather complex artistic program, with a host, declaiming author’s poems, guitar songs, or solo voice.
During the two days we organized a workshop of micro-interventions and we produced street furniture, where the young participants started to work with the tools, to paint, but also to exercise an active transformation of the left over spaces on the alley.
It was installed on the alley a resting place at the end of the steps, a hanging around bench on the route, a chatting corner that can rather used as a jumping over the fence to the Foster Home, and a mobile chair dedicated to the steps.
Among these actions a theme walk around the city took place, where we looked for similar location for future interventions strategies. The walk has been continued by affective mapping exercise, where the youngsters re-drawn the map of the city, by their Memories, Dreams and Malcontents.
special thanks: Olga Szel, Atelier RD