Flying Markets. Architecture of a vision

"Dream pragmatically!" (Aldous Huxley) ARCHITECTURE of a VISION = rigorous construction of an achievable ideal, based on a pragmatic attitude about the information underlying that ideal. The workshop held in Cluj, between May 20-26, 2012, had as main goal to transmit a way of working based on the pursuit of a complex research process as a means to generate and argue the proposed solution. Building the big picture, generating solutions calibrated on the information and skills (or affinities) possessed by each team member, collaboration, as well as active involvement in the life of the city are some of the research means used. The "Flying Markets" motif emerged from the Planwerk initiative in 2009, which resulted in a series of such events in Cluj in 2010. Thus, the workshop and the resulting material aim to provide support and continuity to a phenomenon that has proven to be positive for the city. The workshop was organized by the Association of Architect Students of Cluj, coordinated by the FOR offices in Timișoara (Oana Simionescu, Alex Cozma) and Planwerk in Cluj (Eugen Pănescu, Benjamin Kohl, Vlad Creoșteanu, Iulia Hurducaș, Endre Ványolos). The participants belonged to the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of Cluj-Napoca and represented all years of study. An extensive information base was provided by the team led by Norbert Petrovici from the Faculty of Sociology of the Babeș-Bolyai University. On the first day, the working methods and the current situation of itinerant markets were presented. Together with the students, a network diagram was generated, through which the mass of topics of interest and the connections between them were defined. On the basis of this diagram, five main directions of study were established and the students were organized into five research teams according to their area of interest. The five study categories were as follows: the market in the city, the market in society, the market as an economic phenomenon, the market as urban furniture, the market as a brand. The analysis was complemented by a presentation given by the sociologist Norbert Petrovici, who, together with a team of students from the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, UBB Cluj-Napoca, carried out a study on this type of urban event. The results of the analysis were presented to everyone and debated together. The conclusions of these debates led to the formation of five types of response and the reformulation of the working teams. The approaches of the five teams, although different, complement each other in an overall vision, each aspect touched cannot be omitted in a later implementation of solutions on this topic. In the following, we will present the results and some of the tutors' observations on the deployment and working with the students involved. Read the full text in issue 6/2012 of Arhitectura.