EASA 1:1

One to each other and others to all

EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly) is the largest cultural and educational exchange platform connecting students and professionals from all over Europe and the world. It is decentralized and detached from traditional architecture schools. The summer of 2022 provided the opportunity for the Romanian team to host and organize the 42nd edition of this event for the first time - EASA 1:1.
EASA 1:1 is the product of our creativity and enthusiasm accumulated from the first experience in this community to the last backpack thrown in the trunk on the way home. Our team, in the number of fingers on one hand, included UAUIM students and graduates (Theodora Cișmașu, Ioana Rădulescu, Teodor David and Ioana Stoide), as well as an Architecture and Design graduate from abroad (Andreea Samoilă). The three of us met in our first EASA experience in 2018 (RE:EASA) in the city of Rijeka, Croatia, discovering along the way several Romanian students enrolled in faculties abroad, including Andreea (from the England team). We further participated in the formula of 4 from 2019 (EASA Tourist, Switzerland) and until 2021 (EASA Reality, Serbia), when we decided to submit our proposal for the 2022 edition. In 2020, due to the pandemic and inherent uncertainty, there were no proposals. (These are always made 2 years in advance so that the winning team has enough time for organization).
1:1 is the scale we chose for our event and, by implication, for building and prototyping, thus bringing us face to face with the realities of the context we entered. When you compare things on different scales, a game is born: an elephant can be as big as an ant, if they are positioned correctly relative to each other. We are also very fascinated by maps: maps on different scales, maps as scale models, maps as metaphors and keys to deciphering reality, maps that generate new forms based on the subjectivity of the truth they represent.
Now that we had the 1:1 theme for EASA 2022, we explored a collection of ideas born out of understanding and using maps, taking into account the social dimension of human-to-human and group-to-group interactions.

With this set of concepts and a lot of enthusiasm, we entered the ideas competition to organize the 2022 edition of INCM Essentials, held in Belgium (Intermediate National Contact Meeting). The "jury", also composed of students from all over the continent, debated for four days (and nights, on and off) our proposal and that of the Hungarian collective, and on October 4, 2021, in the evening, we were informed of the community consensus in our favor. At the same time, we found ourselves in a unique situation; one in which the organization clock was ticking from the very beginning of the competition, leaving us only eight months to get everything in place.
The venue was chosen in line with the 1:1 theme. We all gathered around the map of Romania and started analyzing possible host cities.
First of all, we wanted it to be a city where our impact on the community would be visible and at the same time thought-provoking and stimulating for the participants. Secondly, we were looking for a city relatively close to an airport, which would not involve too many exchanges during transportation, and where the language barrier would not be too strong. And last but not least, we found a city, one where the contact with nature is direct and accessible for all the participants of this project - the city of Călărași.
With the theme and location set, we set to work. We started working with local authorities and looked for sponsors for our project. We got to walk around Călărași a few times and scan the surroundings to create our own map of the landscapes, the campus and the spaces we considered in need of intervention.
These intervention needs were the subject of the workshops we hosted. We put out a call for workshops to students and architects from Romania and abroad. After the flood of workshop proposals came the selection process where we strongly encouraged tutors to stay or adapt their proposals as close as possible to the 1:1 concept. We had the pleasure of assembling a total of 20 workshops, from installation building (OffGrid, A Room of One's Memory, Danube Bathroom, Secret Geography of Metapolis), anthropology and performance art (Do People Like your Feet?, I'm Mutable, Whispers, Timescales, Exquisite Dj's) to less usual workshops such as urban exploration through gastronomy and mixed digital media (Promenoodology, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road). On top of all this there were also the community's own workshops: EASA FM (broadcasting music on campus, interviews with participants), EASA TV (photo-video documentation of the 2-week experience and concentrated in a feature-length film watched at the closing ceremony), EASA UMBRELLA (the event newspaper, with interviews and articles about participants, architecture and important news) and last but not least, EASA ARCHIVE (the traveling community archive, collecting all the materials in which the community is directly involved or at least mentioned).
Throughout the 2 weeks, the 270 participants were on the main stage of the city; interacting directly with locals and learning from each other how to get to different places, how to communicate (in particular, how to say "Have a nice day!") and how to enjoy the same place together. On the other hand, housing blocks in the city became the research topic of the workshop "Dumb Emancipatory Housing. Dumbness and Scale", in the form of clay modeling sessions and open discussions about how we relate to the scale of housing and how often its interpretation presents awkwardness (e.g. large blocks with very small flats, very large villas for 2 people, 10-storey blocks next to houses with only ground floor and so on).
They explored the nature around the city on their own feet (even barefoot, in the case of the members of a fictitious institute - "Institute of Piedilogical Research"), and the Tineretului beach in Călărași became a common background for the workshops' activities, but also for moments of relaxation, where they slept under the stars, gathered around a campfire, culminating on the last day with a common dinner by the sunset on the banks of the Borcea branch.
For us, the whole experience we have had at these gatherings over the years is hard to put into words and goes beyond the academic. On each occasion, we have shown our colleagues from faculties across the country a way that can stimulate and change the way they relate to architecture, even more so a way to build connections and true friendships with other student architects from all over Europe.
We would like to see more of this enthusiasm in the future, especially among students in their first years of study, to further fill the EASA Romania's bag of experiences.
This is how it all started, with the thought that we are also providing the framework for EASA to take place, as we too have enjoyed discovering this fascinating community by participating in other editions.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to those who have helped and supported us in organizing EASA 1:1 2022 in Călărași and to offer our best to the 270 foreign participants. We would like to thank, first of all, the City Hall of Călărași, "Mihai Eminescu" Theoretical High School and the Călărași Municipal Museum for their openness towards this event and good collaboration in all stages of its development, as well as for their courage to experiment with us in this unique setting.
Thanks for their promptness, support and funding to our main sponsor, without whom this project would not have taken shape in this form, the Globalworth Foundation.
On this way we would like to thank the sponsors One United Properties, SIAD Călărași, the Helleno-Romanian Chamber of Commerce, Scaffold, DUPONT Tyvek, DOKA, VELUX, Elfi Romania, Drone Profesionale, Scientifica and BeeSwings for their support, backing and essential materials for the workshops hosted. Last but not least, we thank our partners OAR, UAR, Atelierul Magazine, The Institute, the Faculty of Architecture "G. M. Cantacuzino" Iași, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of UBB Cluj, Institute of Piedilogical Research. We personally thank, as students, the management of the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu" Bucharest and the professors of the atelier, Georgică Mitrache and Dragos Dordea, for their moral support and help in organizing "EASA Day" for the students of the Faculty of Architecture.