studioBASAR

University Square

Bucharest Architecture Annual / 2014 - Studies category - Prize.

Km.0 - Model of things and facts

Authors: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan
Model workshop participants: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Diana Culescu, Anna Eckenweber, Claudia Fabian, Radu Leşevschi, George Marinescu, Vlad Petri, Simina Purcaru, Julia Schulze, Johanna Stubbs

The Project ‘Km.0 - Model of things and facts’ was realized in the framework of the exhibition ‘Km. 0. Representations and repetitions of the University Square’ at tranzit.ro/ Bucharest, 30 November 2012 - 28 February 2013, also part of the program ‘Fiction, rhetoric and facts’ developed by tranzit.ro in 2012-2013.

Curator: Raluca Voinea
Participants: Vlad Basalici, studioBASAR, Laris Crunţeanu, Laurenţiu Gâlmeanu, Bogdan Ghiu & Octav Avramescu & studenţi ai Universităţii de Arte Bucureşti, Mihai Mihalcea, Dan Perjovschi, Vlad Petri, Alexandra Pirici, David Schwartz & Mihaela Michailov, Emanuel Vasiliu and others.
Exhibition design: Atelier Brut
Graphic design: Palier Design
Exhibition assistance: Julia Schulze

The exhibition presents different reflections upon the University Square in Bucharest, seen as a “ground zero” of public space in Romania after 1989. While the unresolved conflicts of 1990, which had turned the Square into a memorial place seemed to vanish from public consciousness, in the beginning of 2012 people gathered there again to voice their discontent and - even if apparently only for a short time - they have regained the Square as a place of free expression and manifestation of civic attitude. (Raluca Voinea)

http://ro.tranzit.org/en/exhibition/0/2012-11-30/tranzitro-bucuresti—km-0-representations-and-repetitions-of-university-square

The model is a tool for research, work and urban representation that reproduce on a small scale a situation spatially determined by streets, constructions or plots, decorated with trees, people and cars, added as auxiliary and entourage elements, schematic representation of the city life, used just to give scale and illustrating rather generic uses.

photo credit: Laurenţiu Gâlmeanu - 21 december 1989
www.muzeuldefotografie.ro

Team: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, George Marinescu

University’s Squares is studioBASAR’s contribution to the Planning for Protest project, a publication, exhibition and associated project of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale; Organized by Ben Allen, James Bae, Ricardo Gomes, Shannon Harvey and Adam Michaels; Participants include: Antonas Office (Athens), Studio Miessen (Berlin), studioBasar (Bucharest), Cluster (Cairo), Culturstruction (Dublin), Superpool (Istanbul), Ateliermob (Lisbon), public works with Isaac Marrero-Guillamón (London), Ecosistema Urbano (Madrid), Srdjan Jovanović Weiss / NAO (New York), PioveneFabi with 2A+P/A (Rome), Vapor 324 (São Paulo).

The project explores both the social and architectural definitions of protest in light of the current global financial crisis. Architectural offices witnessing these events first-hand provide case studies and project proposals for contested spaces within their own cities. (Curatorial team)

http://www.planningforprotest.org/
https://www.facebook.com/PlanningForProtest

Making a Square

This square is not just one square, or not even a square at all. It’s rather a system of spaces assembled together around a crossroad of two main boulevards, like a federation of regions that functions under a generic name which can’t be really pointed on the ground, each of its territories having a specific character and use, and even particular names: at The Fountain, In Front of the Theatre, at The Statues, The Park.

I.C. Brătianu Square, and the first electric tramway, Bucharest, beginning of the 20th century.
Photo: MNAC Archive

Danube Building, 1980.
Photo: V.I. Stamate, postcard.

Kilometer Zero

Over time, power didn’t grant Bucharest with one single and undoubtedly center, favoring more a network of centers. This tendency has manifested itself as new power, new center. The events of 1989 and 1990 are following the same pattern of new center making, but it’s an unique moment in that sense: this was the first time when the new center wasn’t chosen by a leader, but by the people’s actions, who fixed their Zero Kilometer of Romanian Democracy and Freedom in the University Square.

University Square, 21 December 1989.
Photo: Laurenţiu Gâlmeanu

University Square, 1990.
Photo: Mădălin Ghigeanu

Stage vs. Sidewalk

Becoming the main storefront of the post-communist city, the square is a very intense and inclusive that functions as a stage for events and celebrations. But there is also the ‚other square’, with its daily rhythms and everyday agents that are using, contesting or even inhabiting this territory like in a parallel world apart, with its different rules and behaviors.

Dan Perjovschi - Monument (History/Hysteria), 2007

Booksellers, 2012, photo: Vlad Petri

In Between

We engage the University Square as a laboratory of Romanian public space, trough an open proposal that goes in between: a pedestrian zebra that is crossing the cross of the boulevards, marking the square trough a daily performed act of protest.

University Square, boulevard N-S, 2013
Photo: studioBASAR

studioBASAR’s proposal: pedestrian crossing on Bratianu boulevard