PROGRAM

 

IN SITU

 

IN FINE

 

Introduction

In the fall of 2019, for its 27th edition, the Belgian festival of arts and architecture Europalia invites UCLouvain-LOCI’s Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning to take part in its program. Since 2013, the Faculty has participated in this great international festival which happens every two years, transmitting the essence of the cultural heritage of a guest country.

(See the productions of LOCI:
• India, Lab-Istanbul collections [http://www.lab-istanbul.be],
• Europalia Indonesia [https://europalia.eu/en/article/specific-generic-ethnic_1186.html]).

In 2019, it will be Romania’s turn to be welcomed by the Europalia Festival. For UCLouvain-LOCI, it will be the opportunity to find a specific program focused on the richness of the history of this country, its specific typo-morphology and its methods of construction. The faculty is always interested in the contemporary issues that are at stake in the country invited by Europalia, while encouraging an intercultural dialogue between the arts of space, cinema, drawing, architecture and urbanism. The aim of the project will be to communicate about architecture in Romania in a transversal way, articulating different points of view through original events. KULeuven University (BE) and Ion Mincu (RO) are joining this project to feed exhibitions and debates.

General context

In October and March, the International Workshop invites students and teachers to collaborate on an innovative multidisciplinary master level program, in planning, urban design, architecture, architectural engineering and design, with partner institutions from different countries. The students work in interdisciplinary and transnational groups. The workshop addresses contemporary issues based on multidisciplinary informations transmitted by experts and field professionals who provide realistic information.

This program provides data used for the rest of the semester, returning to the home institution. Several meetings and teaching sessions might be organized during the rest of the semester to compare the work developed within each school.

Participants:

Professors and students from
Ion Mincu Bucarest RO – UCL-LOCI Brussels BE – KUL Louvain BE ENSA Marseille FR – ENSA Strasbourg FR – ALBA Beyrouth LB

Scientific Commitee:

Mihaela Criticos. Dpt. of histoiry et theory in architecture, Ion Mincu Stefan Ghenciulescu, Dpt. in architecture, Ion Mincu
Christine Fontaine, l’UCLouvain-LOCI
Ward Verbakel, KULeuven

Main issues

The goal of this workshop is to capture the qualities of Bucharest’s specific territory and respond to contemporary challenges in a poetic and original way. The workshop brings together students from urbanism, architecture, architectural engineering and design from Northern and Southern Europe, to give tentative responses to local questions such as the city in the forest, the consolidation of the town, public and non-public spaces, the reinterpretation of specific types of edifice, the housing bloc. The repercussions on the ecology and economy of the region, the habitat, the society and the cultural image of Bucharest are the design motivators. In order to work in this vein, students were encouraged to follow lectures given by experts from diverse disciplines.

The kaleidoscopic result of the plural approaches from each university enables to capture the portrait of Bucharest, from its historical background to its contemporary challenges and confrontations.

Key partners !