Community Museum in Chiojdu. Ideas and School Study

Thematic Dossier

text: Mihaela PELTEACU, Daniela PUIA, Bogdan Mihăilă
photos: Daniela PUIA

In any of these situations, the students enthusiastically bent down to the study, investigating and interrogating the various attitudes and possibilities of spatializing the boundary: being inside the boundary, touching the boundary, detaching from the boundary, covering the boundary, being boundary, etc. The courtyard space thus appears reconfigured in the spirit of a traditional homestead, with new places that can multiply all the activities of the museum for the benefit of the local community: children's workshops, library with learning spaces, craft workshops, local culinary feasts, etc. which, in this formula, can coexist and be independent from the tourist program of visits.
Last but not least, the project gave rise to discussions on the role of structural and constructive options for the quality of the project. At Chiojdu, the materiality is strongly influenced by the presence of wood, a highly prized local material with a long tradition of processing. Although in many cases it proved difficult, the study of the wooden structures was an extremely useful exercise, with the site generously providing documentary material on a one-to-one scale. In the end, it can be said that understanding the site and the possibilities for imagining a community museum were essentially realized through the permanent interrogation of the wood, understanding that its structural logic may or may not make room for certain activities, that the way we choose to put it into action evokes a certain materiality, that it is capable of giving birth to new stories and spaces, fixing us in a permanent relationship with the context.