Exhibitions

Thursday, November 15th, 2018, from 6.00 p.m., the foyer on the floor of the Studio Hall hosts the exhibition Romania - 100 Years of Architectural Competitions, organized by the Faculty of Architecture of Spiru Haret and UAR Sector 2. Curator: PhD lecturer arch. Teodorescu Nicoleta Doina.

The year 1918 meant the fulfilment of the dream, of the ideal and the hopes of many generations of Romanians who wanted, promoted and identified opportunities in the European context of the time.

The century that passed, which we celebrate this year, is the century in which the generations that have lived on these lands created the spatial expression of the Romanian spirit, as we can identify it today. Among those called to materialize this spatial expression, we include architects, and the exhibition we propose is their effort to capture in their proposals and projects, their spirit and aspirations.

Far from reviewing the creation of Romanian architecture over a century, which would have required a totally different approach, the exhibition Romania, 100 Years of Architectural Competitions, draws attention to the value of the Architecture Contest.

Its tradition is based on the quality of the undeniable results, a tradition that is increasingly ignored, the selection of projects being often based on criteria far from the quality of the resulting constructed object. On the other hand, the Architecture Contest, open, accessible, has allowed the assertion of young gifted architects, promoters of original visions of the built space. We can mention here the two Contest teams acknowledged as such: Gabriel Cristea, Dinu Gheorghiu, Constantin Savescu and Romeo Belea and later on Thomas Toma Olteanu, Victor Ivanes, Constantin Dobre and Radu Tanasoiu, architects who asserted themselves through the Architecture Contest, gaining a large number of awards. They have proven their professional value and competence later on also as teachers, mentors of many generations of architects. The contests presented in this exhibition are selected from those published on the pages of the Architecture magazine, accompanied by comments on the topic, selection criteria and proposed solutions. When the authors were able to make material from their personal archives available, we have gladly used them.

We present published projects, some completed, others ignored at a later stage (as is the case with the Bucharest 2000 Contest). Also included in the exhibition is a section devoted to the places of worship, the prophets of worship, architectural proposals after 1989, whether or not included in architectural competitions.

The opening of the exhibition Romania, 100 years of Architectural Competitions shall take place on Thursday, November 15th, 2018, from 6.00 p.m., in the foyer of the NTB Studio Hall!

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu