Essay

The colors of the Bărăgan. The sixth summer together

Essay

The colors of the Bărăgan.
The sixth summer together

text: Alexandra PURNICHESCU, Lorin NICULAE

Beginning of August. Flat spaces, horizontal lines. Light blue, then yellow, green - several shades, finally black. Hot sky. Warm, heavy air. In the Bărăgan Plain, a group of children color a house, guided by their older friends - architects and artists - ArhiPera members, students and volunteers. The courtyard of the house is once again filled with color, voices and energy. The facade takes on life and identity with the help of vivid colors, through the children's participation and joy, giving them the opportunity to be part of the process of finishing their own home.

Last day of summer school. When I arrived, students and pupils were sitting in a thin strip of shade. A stage had just ended. Photographs. Words and smiles. Trust. Next to them, the house is undergoing its metamorphosis. It has been given color, shape, texture and, most of all, hope. The brightly colored circles on the facade of the house contrast with the light-washed hues of the surrounding nature. A few steps away, under the shade of some trees, student architects and family members describe another circle - chatting, exchanging impressions, making plans. The energy planted in the elements of the house will surround the family members, welcoming them and guiding them through their evolution - the joy of a new beginning and a chance for normality.

Nearby, Silvia tells me how the concept behind the composition and color scheme of the facade was born. An archetypal element, the circle, in its geometry, can convey to everyone, regardless of age or background, the idea of harmony and perfection. The model of the universal family - a symbol of the complex, heterogeneous relationships that develop within a family - is similar to the relationship within a network of communicating spheres. From a theoretical point of view, the reinterpreted Orphism is interwoven with the synthesis of the aesthetics of the local spirit in the process of creating the sixth fairy-tale house.

The objective of the summer school, the implementation of the detailed design of the Vătafu family's house - the plastic resolution of the facade and the playful tracery of the porch - has taken shape

gradually took shape, in the hands and imaginations of the students, under the watchful eye of a strong sun, surrounded by building materials, buckets of paint, in an environment that exudes involvement and positive energy. A creative mess that gave birth to the "most beautiful house on the street".

It all starts with communication and trust between team members, in the beautiful project they have to complete, in themselves. Each sense is analyzed individually to cultivate their emotion, their naturalness and their ease. People are built who will build houses.

They follow the blueprint. Playing with concrete blocks - angles, structures, symmetries. Then the good advice, and the porch space takes on a new shape and light. A fabric like a game, made of bricks cut from large cement blocks and artfully blended. Simple technology. Light and light dialog, from a playful and creative perspective. In parallel, the visual concept for the facade is being sketched out, based on expressing the local spirit and the importance of the notion of family through lines and colors.

In addition, members of the summer school take part in practical demonstrations and photography and design workshops. Dialogue, interaction, exchange. The art of constructing immaterialities face to face with the craftsmanship of lasting buildings. A holistic approach to contemporary culture in a social context born of a relentless intellectual appetite coupled with the practice of critical thinking. The search for beauty in the world of objective existence.

Beyond ethnic, social or economic criteria, people in disadvantaged communities are encouraged to transform vulnerability into strength and courage to move forward, in the hope of forming and strengthening open, inclusive and democratic communities - a model for those around them and those to come.

For many years to come, the walls of the painted house will tell the story of the sixth summer in Bărăgan with the ArhiPera family. A nonfigurative cosmic composition, the colorful and dynamic planets symbolize the conception of a new universe. Imagine a better world, a new dimension, an improved space. Simplicity and essentialization. The power of architecture to become, through participation and the breaking down of limits, a model for the soul, the family and the community, a contemporary, universal and profoundly human aspiration, belonging to each one of us.
(Alexandra PURNICHESCU)

House number 6 and its dilemmas

The sixth ArhiPera Summer School was dedicated to finalizing the construction of the house of the Aurel Vătafu family from Belciugatele, living in extreme poverty. This is the sixth very poor family from Belciugatele who, on the recommendation of the local community development group, joined the ArhiPera program. ArhiPera's volunteer student architects designed the house in a participatory manner, having in Mr. Aurel Vătafu a very demanding client, belonging to the well-known category of clients who know exactly what kind of house they want and need architects only as a rapidograph to draw their wishes precisely. That is why the design was difficult for us architects, and the result, although robust and massive, represents us to a very small extent, the project we envisioned for the family being very different from the built house. The inflexible position of the beneficiary presented us with a dilemma that could generate several possible answers: either we withdrew from the project, which would have been immoral in relation to a family living in a slum, without a solid roof over their heads and with high hopes for their new home; or we remained faithful to our compositional principles of spatial-volumetric conformity, risking building a house that the beneficiary would later disfigure or, worse still, be unable to adapt to; or, lastly, we felt that, by thinking about the dwelling in terms of what it can do for the family and not necessarily in terms of what it is architecturally, our choices are less important than the needs of the users.

The third option was imposed by humanity and the technical project has consecrated the house obtained through discussions with the beneficiary. The mural painting conceived by ArhiPera's underage volunteers, future architects, inspired by the dreamism of the Delaunay couple, and the parametrized porch represented two oxygen bubbles for the project's repressed creativity. The pictorial project also threw the old dilemma of modernists and sanănănătoriists in our faces. Although in a rural context, the resulting house is much more traditionalist than we and the children of the family would have liked, so the facade became their playground and their personal expression, unanchored except in dreaming for now. Should we be sad that we did not give this house the measure of our talent as architects or should we be happy that we had the necessary energy and managed to obtain from donations and sponsorships the necessary amount to build a house that will certainly mean another future for the children of the Vătafu family?

(Lorin NICULAE)