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he "Acum-Aici-Acolo" (Now-Here-There) project that won a national competition to represent Romania at the 18th edition of the Biennale di Venezia International Architecture Exhibition was publicly presented on Thursday at the National Library of Romania, told Agerpres.
Chair of the Union of Architects Ileana Tureanu voiced confidence that the international public will visit the Romanian pavilion.
Senior official with the Romanian Foreign Ministry Andrei Novac gave assurances that in 2023, the 85th year when Romania opens its own pavilion in Venice in the Giardini, the pavilion will be refurbished so that Romania can be represented at the highest level.
He pointed out that there will be a bronze plaque at the Romanian pavilion in the Giardini recalling that Nicolae Iorga started the procedures and got the spot there.
"I'm glad that the Biennale Architettura offers us an opportunity that we should use more often because among the cultural fields architecture is a very good promoter of Romanian culture," said Chairman of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) Liviu Jicman.
Senior official with the Culture Ministry Diana Baciuna reaffirmed the ministry's support for the artists.
Also attending the event was Attila Kim, the commissioner of Romania's participation in the 18th edition of the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice; Director of the Dimitrie Leonida National Technical Museum - the main partner of the project - Laura Albani, as well as Emil Ivanescu, the curator and coordinator of the winning project, together with his team made up of Simina Filat, Catalin Berescu and Anca Pasarin.
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The Romanian project "Now-Here-There" is set to put forth "innovative solutions" starting from the theme of the edition curated by Lesley Lokko, "The Laboratory of the Future," which has Africa at the core as the protagonist of the future.
The exhibition, mounted with support from the Dimitrie Leonida National Technical Museum, is a research by the Romanian social and professional environment, in which the trade of architect expands and acquires another influence in society.
The research brings to the fore 100 local Romanian initiatives based on multidisciplinary creativity through which architects, designers, urban planners, and landscapers work together with entrepreneurs, researchers and citizens to bring something good to the environment in which they live.
According to the winning project team, the Giardini Pavilion will be transformed into a "great accelerator of ideas," building an "inspirational" environment generated by long-lost but ever-present inventions and innovations alongside initiatives of younger generations of architects directly involved in the transformation of the immediate reality.
They bring ideas related to technology, technique, inventions, very close to those of architecture, habitable space, necessities of life. Each theme presents 10 case studies, including a series of innovations made by great names of Romanian science and technology such as Henry Coanda and Iustin Capra, "true alternative pedagogies to the traditional way of education, but also of living and urban consumption."
According to the developers, the "Now-Here-There" project wants to express the way in which the younger generations of Romanian architects transform their profession from a "speciality of the blueprint" to one of collaboration, communication, entrepreneurship, social, technology, multidisciplinary research in order to better respond to the challenges of the present and the future.
The exhibition will be open between May 20 and November 26 at the Romanian Pavilion - Giardini and at the New ICRCU Gallery, before which an installation will be placed.
Researched at the ICR gallery will be the need for and education of people to reintegrate and regain nature in dense cities.
"At ICR, the area of agriculture and 'FutureFood' will be analysed, that is how we will think about food in the future, and great emphasis will be placed on the seed bank. Because we have some very interesting things, we are an agricultural country and not many countries have seed banks," said Ivanescu.
In the square before the gallery, an urban installation will provide a venue for six months for permanent exhibitions by Romanian architecture students with projects that analyse and represent all these themes of the Biennale.
The exhibition will also be mounted at the Bucharest Architecture Biennale and the Romanian Design Week.
