Working in the community

Sky Hill Projekt - 7 years

It is one of the tricks that the mind frequently plays on us. It often happens that we architects are "all-knowing"... Architecture is an action of building new exterior, but at the same time we build more and more rooms inside, which are obviously related to each other and continuously multiplied. We are deprived of perpetual contact with the present moment, and so the "thief of space and time" invades room by room, and we stubbornly continue to extend the built space... and... and the city, this mirage that floats through the spaces constructed by our minds, becomes, without a doubt, far too sophisticated for the necessary simplicity we so long for. We all...

Against the backdrop of the creed beside and some of the themes applied in the student practices we coordinate each year, we were able to explore primarily the contact with the natural material, the handmadeness and the relationship between eye-hand-mind so elegantly referred to by Juhani ^Pallasmaa1, as well as to experience first-hand the experimental nature of the senses that Peter Zumthor advocated in his essay The magic of the^real2 .

In addition to the above, as architects and students of the Faculty of Architecture, we experienced a new dimension of the profession: the approach - by which we mean the distance from the drawing/design to the finished object. The fascination of drawing was thus extended to the object that I was defining, pursuing and realizing until the end; until the drawn object lived independently, fulfilled its function, could be watched as it "aged". And as life always responds to our intentions, in 2005 I was going to propose to a client an exterior design for a vacation home in Cheile Nerei. As it was almost the practical training period, I proposed that he provide us with wood to make a gate, the access to the house and the dining pavilion. In other words, an experiment. After 15 days, the results surprised everyone.

It was then that the idea of finding a place nearby that would allow the development of a Center for Experimental Architecture, an open studio space, a total project in which there would always be something to do, the natural material to find its purpose through the simplicity of the gesture of building... Because from one year to the next, more and more houses were being abandoned, we found the right place: it was called Heaven's Hill (since the Austro-Hungarian Empire)... a predestined name. This "place" had everything needed to support multiple actions. We started with the house, built in 1907, of handmade brick and hewn oak beams, the attic begging to be lived in, the clay floors we had poured on a bed of sand. We redid the lime plaster and repointed the joints in the foundations. At the same time, work groups were working on the 'zen view' and the 'Maiden's Tower' workshop, the 'eye in the sky' that was to be the place to contemplate the fire.

The experiment continued, the open studio became palpable. From 2010, we sought to have guests and multidisciplinarity became a theme. To begin with, we invited professors and students from the Faculty of Physics to build a solar system. We needed energy, and we wanted it to be local. In 2011, telephones (which you couldn't talk on due to lack of signal) were charging from the photovoltaic panels and the video projector could scroll at will through the information presented. In 2012, the high demand for internships led to the organization of two international working groups. A clay kiln and the covering of the shed where the materials are housed were the major themes of the year. In parallel, guest teachers revealed the secrets of how to build a concept, we built musical instruments and puppets, learned about the movement of the body in space with a short introduction to eurythmy, the secrets of woodcuts and perfume composition.

We also inaugurated the Sky Hill Library, this year collecting more than 200 titles: architecture, art, non-fiction, novels.

The professional joy has been continually coupled with savoring nature and teamwork, the aroma of bread from the local wheat or fresh juice from the plums in the courtyard.

In 2012 it was 195 years since the inauguration of the Mihai Eminescu Theater in Oravița. West University by Dan Vizman, Archaeus Foundation by myself and Maria Dragomirescu organized an event on the same multidisciplinary structure in which prominent guests gave presentations on various topics, from science to art. Peripatetica 2012 was a real success, all the more so as we received a positive reaction from people of culture in a city that only organizes a few cultural events a year.

Starting this year, the Archaeus Foundation is offering scholarships to students who have proven to be role models in terms of involvement, behavior and attitude in its actions. The scholarship program is called the Sky Sailing Expedition and this year it consisted of sailing (for one week) on a sailing boat off the Greek coast in the Ionian Sea. The challenge on this voyage was to achieve a united team... a daredevil crew... on board a boat that runs on renewable energy.