Restoration

This year's judging was for us, the jurors, a particularly intense and instructive exercise, especially in the final part, the field verification of the conformity of the projects and the relevance of the restoration parts.
The three members of the jury selected - on the basis of the projects submitted - 15 projects for the Restoration and Heritage Recovery and Interpretation of Identity sections from all over the country with potential for nomination.
As the success of restoration and memory recovery projects are intimately linked to the respect for the integrity of the monument, the degree of preservation of the historical material and their material transposition, the jury decided to go on-site to all the projects selected for nomination.
Thus, four days of traveling followed, on the route of Bucharest, Iași, Lăzarea, Târgu Mureș, Dej, Cluj, Alba Iulia, etc. These were four extraordinary days, during which we had the privilege of visiting the buildings/ sites in the presence of the designers, commissioners and contractors.
Nothing could be more authentic and precious than this direct assessment of the realization of the initial project intentions, confronted in real time with the explanations of the authors!
The predominant criteria of evaluation in this final phase were: conformity of the project with the realization, respect for the historical material and construction, difficulty/ chalenge/challenge proposed, originality/ uniqueness of the approach.
The dialog with the authors was dense and passionate. It was also a rare opportunity to meet the authors of the projects in their "home". For me, meeting a new and young generation of architects and restorers was both a privileged moment and a real joy.
What a generous idea that the Awards Gala should be in Craiova - this is how the young architects from Moldova and Szeklerland met the young architects from the south of the country...