Research - Memory - Experimentation.pdf
Round table moderated by: Prof.Ph.D.Arch. Ana Maria Zahariade - UAUIM
Book launching: Interrogating the Form
International publication contributors: Ancuța Ilie, Ovidiu Baron, Agostino Bossi, Davide Colaci, Michaela Gafar, Maria Teresa Giametti, Angela Girardo, Jacopo Leveratto, Françoise Pamfil, Pierluigi Salvadeo.
01.07.2025, 18.00
Fresco’s Hall
part of the international conference UAUIM International Diploma Talks: Framing the Future of Architectural Education
„Three workshops between study and experimentation / The domestic space of traditional Romanian architecture was the reference point around which the workshops held at the Astra Museum in Sibiu were organized. Home, crafts and cooking have been specifically addressed in succession over the last three years. The study, research and design activities were characterized by the adoption of a methodology focused on the identification and development of contemporary design of the original oikological vocations immanent to form, to the space, techniques and materials of ancient agro-pastoral dwellings. This approach proved to be extremely fruitful, because it helped to consolidate in the students the awareness of the fact that innovation, to be reliable on the level of formal and spatial values of contemporary living, must go through a deep hermeneutic-critical confrontation with the constitutive principles of architecture and their historical declination.”
— Agostino Bossi
The project-based exploration workshop promoted by the Astra Museum in Sibiu proposed as case study the discovery and reinterpretation of objects from the agro-pastoral tradition, which are part of its valuable heritage. Astra is composed of traditional wooden houses, restored and located in a large natural park. This exhibition mode is so special for the collection, conservation and study of domestic spaces - an expression of the ethnography of the Romanian people - that it can be enriched by the furniture and objects found in these spaces, still in use, and which today are part of the exhibition. Often they are very common objects whose memory wanders in time, forms whose initial use is no longer possible or necessary. Due to the intrinsic qualities that qualify duration, during the workshop, the objects were observed, discovered and reinterpreted through design experiments aimed at giving them a new meaning and at the same time a new use.
Starting from this thematic horizon, the Astra Museum's project exploration workshop represented a good opportunity to delve deeper into some theoretical aspects regarding the theme of form: in particular, the transitory nature of form over time and its changes due to new uses and new production techniques.
— Maria Teresa Giametti
„The ASTRA Museum of Traditional Popular Civilization is one of the largest open-air museums in the world, where historic rural houses from all over Romania have been reassembled.
In this wonderful place, for many years students and professors, from many European schools of architecture, have met to develop new ideas and new architectural projects together.
…And the place is truly propitious, because here a layering of different layers superimposes the past on the present; because each reassembled building comes out of itself to open up to a new existence, like a continuous and incessant rebirth; because the visit to the museum is not a simple visit, but becomes a real dramaturgical experience that transforms the visitor into an active protagonist.
In this magical place, a particular creative condition stimulates ideas and opens up to future projections.”
— Pierluigi Salvadeo