Arhitectura 4-5/2023 (706-707)

Arhitectura magazine has been publishing diploma projects for more than a hundred years, but it has never devoted such a large number to them. We did it this year, believing that we did it for the new generation and for the years to come. This issue is like a time capsule that will bear witness decades from now to what the new generation of architects and the schools that mentored them were thinking when they graduated in 2023.

The Biennale has this practical character, gathering under its dome only built projects and printed books, with the exception of the diploma projects, the projects in the Ephemer section and the Photography of Architecture, which has a large dose of the tangible in it. The diploma projects are a special subject in this landscape of national realities, they contain a large dose of hypothetical situations, courageous approaches, nonconformist explorations. This is the 3rd edition of the BNA with a "diploma" section and the participation was extremely numerous: 134 diploma projects from the faculties of architecture in Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Iași and Chisinau.

134 ways of seeing tomorrow's world. 134 birth certificates of the new generation. But really, when do you become an architect? When you enter architecture school? When you graduate? When you get your license? With your first built project? Probably somewhere along the way or maybe even later. What we do know for sure is that one of the first signs of maturity is when, fresh out of university, you enter the most important project of your life so far in a national competition where your projects are public, appear in the media and tour the country.