My Place - Behind the Flats

Bridge 2013

Team: Cecilia Frâncu, Dan Manea, Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Tudor Elian, Alin Voitescu, Mihai Bucur, Smaranda Bucur, Diana Culescu, Mihai Culescu, Roxana Szel, Sofia Mihăilescu
Recycling workshop: Reciclare Creativă
Exhibition layout: Alin Voitescu
Concert: Anita Petruescu & Late Summer Band
Guides for walks: Dan Manea, Mihai Bucur, Mihai Culescu
Talks: Emanoil Bellu, Cecilia Frâncu, Mariana Cojoc
Photo: Marius Tudose
Location: Horea, Cloşca şi Crişan street, Sfântul Ilie neighborhood, Sinaia
Period: 24 - 26 Mai 2013

As a follow-up to the actions developed in Sinaia - ReStart in 2011 or the interventions from Take Ionescu alley and the model workshop from the Carmen Sylva Cultural Center in 2012 - the event Bridge took place, the 2013 edition of the project My meeting place, a different place. The event was organized by the Friendship Association Sinaia-Athis-Mons, Cityhall Sinaia, Association Prahova Excelsior, Association of architecture Sinaia-Buşteni-Azuga, studioBASAR, Reciclare Creativă D’Avent.

http://www.studiobasar.ro/?p=2916&lang=en
http://www.studiobasar.ro/?p=4011&lang=en

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The chosen location has been documented in 2012 trough visits and walks and further by idea workshop, where kids from the town imagined right on the models possible layouts for several underused public spaces, among that where an area from Sfântul Ilie neighborhood.

Here, beyond Sinaia - tourist resort, at the end of a row of flats, between a slope, a fence and the laundry ropes, an open public space survived the encirclement by the edged metallic fences.

Together with volunteers - locals and guests - we tried for two days to provoke the creativity of the young and the participation of the neighbors by organizing a series of events and actions located in two nearby sites: the laundry area and the community center in the neighborhood.

The center accommodated inside an exhibition and few presentations with previous or similar actions, and also outside space hosted the creative workshops, meetings about neighborhood stories, a wood workshop or street games and drawing on the asphalt. This was also the meeting place for the walks with a geographical and urban theme.

In the same time, the laundry area has been temporary transformed to host a final fest, where participants and neighbors stayed together for the first time. At the end, the euro pallets ranks has been dismantled, leaving behind a mini-stage, few benches made with the kids from the neighborhood and as well the promise for future actions.

In the neighborhood, old and young

Team: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Tudor Elian, Maria Daria Oancea, Alin Voitesctu, Ana Maria Ţoni, Mihai Culescu, Raluca Dumitru, Roxana Spânu.
Location: Horea, Cloşca and Crişan street, neighborhood Sf. Ilie, Sinaia
Period: 24-30 March 2014

Event organized by studioBASAR following the action Bridge 2013; supported by Friendship Association Sinaia-Athis-Mons, Association Prahova Excelsior, Association of architecture Sinaia-Buşteni-Azuga, City hall Sinaia.

Following the actions of ,opening’ from 2013, we initiated in the next spring a process of accumulation and collecting. For one week we opened doors and chat with the inhabitants of Sf. Ilie neighborhood about identity and landmarks then and now, about whishes, neighbors, personal histories, but also about the heating center or possible interventions in the area.

At the week’s end we’ve opened for the inhabitants the former heating center. The first visitors have been the children that set of in the morning hunting for places, looking for something with eyes, something hidden or some treasures, and in the afternoon they’ve imagined their neighborhood trough a paper model.

Meanwhile the exhibition with stories, memories and whishes collected during the week was opened and visited by few locals that discovered with pleasure and interest an exhibition only about their neighborhood and noticed especially the potential of the heating center to become a community center of the neighborhood, but also other potential places.

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In the evening, after the theater group ‚Mirrors’ from Sinaia’s high school recite few poems. The audience composed mainly from children received with much enthusiasm the projection of the Romanian animation movie ‚Robinson Crusoe’, their parents telling us that is probably the first time when the children watch a movie together.

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Sfântul Ilie. My neighbourhood

Team: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Dan Manea, Anca Marin, Ana-Maria Ţoni, Tudor Elian, Alin Voitescu.
Location: hall HCC (the former heating plant), street Horea, Cloşca and Crişan, Neighbourhood Sf. Ilie, Sinaia.
Period: 2-4th October, 2015

Event coordinated by The House of Architects Sinaia, Buşteni, Azuga, Predeal, together with studioBASAR, in the framework of the project “My place, a Different Place 2015″; financed by the Romanian Order of Architects (OAR)from the architecture stamp within the “Finance session 2015 for cultural projects of associations and foundations”, realised in partnership with the Prahova branch of OAR, with the support of Sinaia cityhall.
Collaborators: Prahova Excelsior Socio-Cultural Association, Athis-Mons friendship Association, Foster home Sinaia.

Neighbourhood Juornal: https://issuu.com/lmasinaia/docs/jurnal_20de_20cartier_202015

Dispossessed by its technological utility, the former heating plant is used now just as voting hall at elections. Occupying a key position, the plant remains a spatial resource that can be reintegrated in the neighbourhood’s circuit, by its activation with cultural and educative actions supported by the local organisations. For the third consecutive year, the plant HCC has been restarted, without distributing heat, but fuel for the community.

The action “Sfântul Ilie. My Neighbourhood” opened up the HCC plant for three days, constructing a 1:1 scale possibility of a community centre. Following the actions from previous years, we tested the spatial potential of the plant, we consolidated the partnerships among the organizers and we opened up a dialog between inhabitants, administration and local associations.

The inhabitants have been invited to discover a new place, opened up right in the heart of their neighbourhood. Here an exhibition was installed, built up from the memory of the place and the history of previous actions, that in the same time was inviting the inhabitants to discuss some transformation proposals of several public spaces from the neighbourhood. The content of the exhibition was retrieved also in a “Neighbourhood Journal”, a publication that was very well received in the neighbourhood.

The plant has “heated” step-by-step, hosting lectures about the history of the city and urban education workshops. Here, the model with landmarks showed the neighbourhood through the children’s eyes, and from here, the treasure hunt expedition explored the “Sfântul Ilie island” as a teritory unknown but full of possibilities.

Thus, the events organized in the plant, together with the inhabitants response, had signalled the need of the function, even seasonal, of the plant as a social hub attached to a centre of cultural and educational distribution, localised in the heart of Sfântul Ilie neighbourhood, managed by the partner organizations and local administration.