Blog Interior Scholarship
Mai 2021
Bloggerin: Catalina Dumitru
_(IR)RECOVERABLE RUIN_

 

Every construction represents an important modification to the territory — a modification which affects how people relate to the environment.
I am fascinated by the life cycle of the built environment. No matter how durable it was intended to be, everything is degrading. Despite our historicist sensibility that will not allow us to erase the past without feeling a little barbaric, despite our bravest hopes to preserve everything, I find it unnatural not to accept destruction. Degradation, yielding to the natural law, becomes a source of mystery and beauty, exactly because we cannot know about what lies beyond death.

In this sense, every building is an incipient ruin. From the moment of construction, ruination starts. The architectural problem begins when the building no longer respects the principles of order. The windows become openings; the walls do not impose strict divisions on the space; new ways of perceiving the interior suggest themselves. The building becomes risky to explore; spontaneous scenarios of space open up. Without rules, the space offers a “happening” — it questions and redefines intentions, identity, built architecture itself.

A ruin is on the verge or threshold between form and formlessness, as well as between inhabitable and uninhabitable. It lends itself well to a deconstructionist interpretation that would not view architecture primarily as a shelter and refuge. Without a sense of utility, then, does a ruin properly belong to the sphere of art? Or the manifesto, even? This is an open question that my project will keep returning to.

To tackle this complex topic, I am going to focus on something specific. I am not going to discuss the Romantic fascination with monument-ruins. I am going to focus on an abandoned power plant that is part of the post-industrialisation landscape in Romania, where entire industries disappeared and left behind buildings that remain, to this day, in a state of steady ruination or have been demolished and replaced.

The power plant was built in Flore?ti, Romania, in 1922-23. It was commissioned by Steaua Electric? to generate electricity to power the oil refineries in the petroleum-rich surrounding area. It was built by the architect Duiliu Marcu and the engineer Emil Prager. The design was heavily influenced by the Neo-Romanian style, a historicist style using traditional motifs developed mainly in the late-19th and early-20th centuries in Romania. The reinforced concrete structure was covered over with red brick, which is decorated by ornamental cornices, enframements, and pediments. The power plant closed down in 1971, and it has been falling apart ever since.
I present three main ideas that problematise the ruin as an architectural phenomenon. My case-study is the power plant.

One. Architecture in its basic form separates the exterior from the interior. Interior architecture is usually contained within the limits defined by the exterior shell of a building. But a ruin often does not present a tightly sealed space. In that case, how is interior space to be defined?

Two. If architecture is a form of coherent organisation that expresses an identity and an idea, then what does a ruin express through its unexpected rules and lack of organisation?

Three. Adapting a building to a novel purpose, context, etc., without depriving it of its identity is a general problem in architecture. With ruins, the problem is especially relevant. Usually, working with existing buildings tends to result in a form of façadism. How can working with ruins provide new insight into working with the past?

We mean by ‘tabula rasa’ not only demolishing a building, but turning back the clock to a certain initial point. It is separating the natural progression of the history of a building from its identity.
If rehabilitation can be defined as the resumption of possession of a building, then a ruin, before any process of rehabilitation, is without any owner. It is space that is left alone, simply to be. How can an architectural intervention let the past coexist naturally with the present?

In my project I want to analyse how nature takes over architecture. The ruin becomes more empty space than built space. It is about the shell, and the void enclosed by it. What does the absence, this surplus of space create? How can we shape this void? What scenario can we imagine for occupying a ruin?
Pursuing this concept, I explored techniques as resin printing, silicon moulding and resin casting. My first idea was to materialise the empty space. But what material would express best the tactile, full sensation of being in a certain space, but also the emptiness of space? I decided to use resin. I turned the empty space into a solid block of resin. I have made the void visible. On the other hand, I reduced the façade to a fragile boundary, because, in our experience of a ruin, it is the empty space that is significant, not the built space. I have turned into tangible material the experience of a ruin.

Ruins offer not only a physical experience for the senses, but also material for the imagination.

Every ruin served a particular purpose in the past, then stopped doing so. Its lack of a function, its disregard for utility, allows for a pure experience of space. Even the most pedestrian activities gain a significance when taking place in a ruin. A ruin is a setting for spectacle and for making suggestive associations. Just as dead things are strange, but in their strangeness fascinate, ruins are mysterious, sinister, and enthralling. There is no clear resolution, because a ruin has already been resolved, in a way, in a kind of death. There is no clear pattern, as it becomes riddled with gaps and distortions. The lack of pattern creates new associations.

The experiments were made possible by the kindness and support of professor arch. Andreea Iosif.

 

Von den Möglichkeiten des Interior Scholarship hat Catalina Dumitru durch ein Plakat an der Universität Bukarest erfahren. Dort studiert sie Innenarchitektur. Catalina Dumitru ist eine der vier Stipendiat*innen des mit insgesamt 24.000 Euro dotierten Interior Scholarship. Vor ihrem Wechsel zur Innenarchitektur hat die 1997 geborene Catalina Dumitru Philologie studiert. Sie mutmaßt, dass sie sich daher besonders für Design begeistern kann, das Gedanken über Geschichte, unsere Lebensweise oder Vorurteile hervorruft. „Ich bin immer auf der Suche nach effektiver Beleuchtung, räumlicher Organisation und ungewöhnlichen Möglichkeiten, mit dem Material umzugehen“, betont Catalina Dumitru. Denn gutes Innenraumdesign soll für sie unser Denken aus einem primär physischen Erleben heraus fordern. Es soll eine multisensorische Erfahrung bieten, die gelebt und nicht nur gesprochen werden muss.

Für das Interior Scholarship 2020/21 – das AIT-Stipendium der Sto-Stiftung – hat sich die junge Rumänin mit ihrem Portfolio sowie einer Bearbeitung der diesjährigen Stegreifaufgabe „Haben oder Sein? – die neuen Räume der Sharing Community“ beworben.  Mit dem Stipendium verbindet Catalina Dumitru die „großartige Chance, talentierte Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Hintergründen kennen zu lernen.“ Sie möchte ihr Studium weiter fortführen. Dazu plant sie, sich für einen Masterstudiengang im Ausland zu bewerben – auch eine Promotion wäre denkbar. Verschiedene Schritte, mit denen Catalina Dumitru das Ziel verknüpft, Innenarchitektur in einer immer komplexeren und sensibleren Art und Weise zu praktizieren.

Juryurteil:

“Die Projekte von Catalina Dumitru zeichnen sich besonders durch ihre konzeptionelle Schärfe und einen enormen Reichtum an Suggestionskraft aus. Die vielseitigen Arbeiten sind durchgehend auf höchstem Niveau und schaffen den Sprung, räumliches Denken mit charaktervollen Sphären zu vereinen. Mit ihren Entwürfen gelingt es Catalina Dumitru, eine eigenständige und aussagekräftige Position zu beziehen, die sie in die Lage versetzt, programmatische Komplexität und unterschiedlichste Maßstäblichkeiten scheinbar spielerisch zu neuen Welten zu komponieren. Ihre gestalterischen Fähigkeiten sind dabei abwechslungsreich, überraschen durch Neues und zeugen von großer Experimentierfreudigkeit. Die Darstellungen der Entwürfe sind sehr individuell auf die spezifischen Entwurfsansätze abgestimmt und belegen eindrucksvoll das Talent und die Fähigkeiten von Catalina Dumitru.

Wir dürfen uns in Zukunft auf weitere Arbeiten von Ihr freuen!”

 

Blog Interior Scholarship
Dezember 2020
Bloggerin: Catalina Dumitru
_memory exercise_

For this semester, we were assigned to turn a 1911 building in Bucharest into a hotel. The building is located in the heart of the city center, close to one of the oldest parks – Cismigiu Gardens. It used to be called the Palace Hotel, one of the most luxurious hotels in Bucharest of the early 20th century. It is an eclectic construction with neoclassical and art nouveau elements. During the communist regime it changed its name to Hotel Cismgiu, and in 1990 it became the dormitory for the University of Theatre and Film, already in a devastating state of degradation.

From the original building we have today only the fac?ade. In 2004 there was an intervention that completely replaced the interior structure, the roof was raised, and a new floor was added on top. The interior courtyard was covered and transformed into a conference room on the groundfloor. The building, essentially, remained only a shell. Here are my questions: what are the mechanisms of memory? Is Facadism enough for collective memory? Keeping a building the same as it used to be in the past may be a dead end in an evolving society. But I wonder how we can create a continuous organic life in the evolution of a building, not shattered and disconnected sequences that only respond to the needs of each generation, ignoring the past and the future.

Memory connects times. But how do we remember spaces? To what extent can I control how future visitors will look back, what they will remember? My first response was a phenomenological approach. Everything has to be impressionistic. An architecture of senses.

Because of the 2004 intervention, with an interior that has nothing to do with the original, I assumed unlimited freedom. I introduced a new element – a pater noster elevator in the interior garden. (I demolished the conference room added in the previous intervention). This elevator creates a new circulation point and bridges every floor together. There is continuous movement – the elevator creates a dynamic experience, a crescendo of emotions. On the groundfloor the bridge invites you from the street. It bursts inside — this is the reception — then it leads you to the elevator. There are 2 axes of movement – the horizontal one – entrance-reception-elevator – and a vertical one represented by the ascension with the elevator. The intersection point is an urban garden dedicated for heightening the sensorial experience. On each floor, the space is planned to merge conscious actions (which respond to physical needs like eating, sleeping etc.) and a strong sensorial experience that is able to connect with memory. The entresol is dedicated to reconfigurable office spaces, conference rooms and a cultural hub. The 1st floor is dedicated to a public restaurant. 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th floors are dedicated to hotel rooms. Each living floor is equipped with a space dedicated to breakfast, lounge and interaction. Moving up, the 6th level is dedicated to wellness. – there is a gym but also a tearoom – there will be different plants around, different textures of rocks on the ground: simply moving through the space will be therapeutic. This sensorial crescendo culminates with a belvedere point  ascending with the pater noster elevator.

The bridges create rhythm in your perception of the space. It guides the experience. All the time, the intersection point between the bridge and the building is an important functional and atmospheric point. (the kitchenette, the bar or the lounge). Also the visual perception is controlled – the perspective is carefully framed. The bridges are translucent – the semi-exposure of the people walking in the tunnel contrasts with the intimacy that a tunnel creates.

Will architecture follow function? In this case, architecture will follow the atmosphere, the sensorial perception of that function. Like a Proustian character – visitors of this hotel, next time they savour their favourite tea or they smell their favourite flower, they will remember a pater noster elevator that connected an urban garden with their room.