NOW, HERE, HERE an idea accelerator

The Romanian Pavilion proposes an idea accelerator that brings the discourse on innovation and collaboration to the forefront. The visitor is invited to experience the space in an interactive, brainstorming journey in search of new ideas about the inclusive future. The pavilion presents the concept of a collaborative future through innovation, invention and activation, overlapping two seemingly different planes, brought together by the very idea of collaboration across fields, disciplines, social groups and generations.
The first plan is a sketch of the Lost Inventions, original artifacts created as a result of research and collaboration by various Romanian inventors of the early 20th century, many of them unrecognized at the time. We aim to bring these laboratories of the future of yesteryear back into focus, while questioning to what extent we are able, today, to identify valuable innovations for the future that may already be present, unnoticed, all around us. On a deeper look at the artifacts of the past, we would perhaps realize that some of our forebears were well aware of what their future will face. We like to think that we can do the same.
The second plan is a series of Lateral Pedagogies comprising a hundred case studies presenting and analyzing projects created by teams of architects, designers, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists, economists and various other actors in the political and administrative spheres. Its aim is to exemplify how the collaborative and interdisciplinary orientation of the work generates new methods of education for a participatory and inclusive future. All have been developed through research, activation, dialog and negotiation, representing a new practice driven by a radical shift within the consumerist client-designer paradigm. These actions are representative of an emerging type of practice in Romanian architecture and design, developed in the last 15 years and characteristic for the evolution of the local civil society.
The Lost Inventions section is placed under the sign of memory, an often surprising history. An electric car from 1904, massive but somehow elegant and still functional, the world's first aerodynamic four-wheel drive car, made in the 1920s, various other mechanical and electronic devices and inventions made by recycling, devices for working in radioactive fields, fast technologies for building modular, social and affordable housing made by collaboration, all created almost a century ago and ignored, for so many years, by people and history. Lateral Pedagogies, on the other hand, brings to the table current issues but also solutions related to social inclusion, contemporary public space, urban agriculture, vulnerable communities, humanitarian action, political and social action in which architects and designers are actively involved to transform the field of practice, but also that of space and quality of life. If our future is urban, how adequate are our current responses for a more sustainable future? Although they occupy less than 2% of the Earth's surface, cities are responsible for 75% of natural resource consumption and 50% of waste globally. This will therefore require not only advanced technologies, but also a radical change of mindset where the current "consumer" becomes a contributor, an activator, a recycler. Studies show that an impressive amount of resources can be saved if the principles of circularity, recycling and sustainability are foreseen at the design stage. Therefore, we need to find options and alternatives, and the 100 Lateral Pedagogies are exactly alternative and educational examples implemented through collaboration, research and social engagement. Here, architects, designers and urban planners act as facilitators, being fully aware that their professional practice is only valid if it is embedded in a context and brings ethical and critical values into question.
The exhibitions of the Romanian Pavilion, both in the Giardini and in the Cannaregio, where we set up anInstant Garden, reveal a discourse about ideas, technologies, artifacts and actions in the initial flow phase, which defines the moment before the idea, the Solution, the Innovation. Acting as a spatial mood board, the pavilion offers some conceptual ingredients and positions them on a path reminiscent of the contemporary cognitive practice of co-thinking followed by co-action. NOW and HERE are the innovation imperatives, calling for a type of innovation that can only come from collaboration and complex relationships, and that aims to transform the existing environment on an ethical basis. According to innovation historian Steven Johnson: "We take ideas that we have inherited or destroyed and put them together in new forms". The present, the past and the wider context - which is HERE, in the future - are the essential ingredients for reshaping reality with humane and humane ideas.
NOW, HERE, ACOLO is a plea for a pragmatic vision of the present and the future, in which everything matters, everything is interconnected, and everything is filtered through technology, yet conquered by intense social exchange. The environment, the city, the neighborhood are common goods and must be fully respected and cared for, thus reaffirming the principle of contextuality and humanity.
Our title also contains a plot: NOW and HERE are at the basis of mobilizing, activist slogans that are quickly exhausted in the face of the fervor of generalized skepticism, but we then added THERE, that is, a place in the future that needs to acquire a spatial consistency since the exhibition is a challenge to the people in charge of planning, and they are the ones who must counterbalance the imperative of the present with reverie about the future. We start from the reflexivity of looking back at a challenging past, whose innovations were not sufficiently considered at the right time, and propose a review of some of the principles by which the laboratories of the future will be able to function outside the experimental workshops, in a world where design is part of the democratic exercise. The recent pandemic crisis together with the current belligerent crisis in Ukraine have confirmed the importance of these human values, where technology or politics have failed to cope. In the context of global crises affecting the whole planet, coming together, collaborating to innovate and find new ideas is essential and provides the key to a transition to people-centered design.
As Achille Mbembe says in his book Critique ofBlack Reason: "There is only one world and we all have a right to it, we all have a right in it. This world belongs to us all equally, and we are all co-heirs, even if the way in which we inhabit it is not the same - hence the real plurality of cultures and ways of living".

So, shall we say that the future is NOW and HERE, a glowing crucible of problems and opportunities in search of a place that is right THERE, in front of us, and can only be glimpsed through the collaborative lens of multidisciplinarity?
Statistics show that by 2050 there will be 10 billion of us, over 70% of the world's population will live in urban areas and we will need to produce 60% more food to feed the global population.

Today, more than a billion people have no access to safe drinking water, even though in 1950 a Romanian inventor created a desalination plant in 1950 that turned seawater into drinking water using only solar energy. Although the invention was a success, producing 1,600 liters of drinking water in 12 hours in an 8^m2 device^, it was blocked for bureaucratic reasons at the working prototype stage.
What would the future have looked like if these solutions had been realized in their time?
Both the future and the present need not only advanced technologies, but also a fundamental change of mentality that will transform the current consumer into an active player in the transition to a greener and more democratic society.
The Romanian Pavilion is a generator of ideas that brings to the forefront the creative path of innovations and inventions born only from interdisciplinary collaboration. Ideas and objects become the ingredients of a dialog about a future in which the visitor is welcome to participate by exploring the pavilion space.
On display are original technical artifacts, including an early 20th century electric car, the world's first aerodynamic vehicle with wheels inside the body, machines made by superior recycling, a wave energy capture device, prefabricated social housing systems, all of which were laboratories of the future in their time.
What can we learn from how these innovations came about and how can we ensure that our innovations are not lost?
Lateral pedagogies are projects carried out through research, social activation and education in Romania or by Romanian architects who work closely with designers and researchers to provide the most effective and creative solutions.
ACUM, AICI, ACOLO is a pragmatic vision of the present and the future, where everything matters, everything is interconnected and everything is inclusive.
We believe the future will be based on 6 ingredients: Energy, Design, Food, Regeneration, Back to School, Community.
Perhaps some of these ingredients currently seem like crises or conflicts, but through Now, Here, There we examine these ingredients and identify them in the dialog between technological artifacts, forgotten inventions and new contemporary architecture & design practices that come from the consumerist paradigm, reinforcing practice, research and lateral education.
We believe that the future lies in the power to co-generate ideas leading to inventions and innovations as answers to the challenges ahead.
The visitor is invited to interact with four areas of research:Forgotten Inventions, Lateral Pedagogies,InstantGardenand Co-Future Thinking, all of which constitute a new way of education through research, innovation and social activation seen as solutions for the future.