BAAB is an architecture, research and urban design studio established by Irina Niculescu and Alexandru Belenyi in 2015. In the past 8 years Irina and Alexandru together with their collaborators and colleagues have developed numerous architecture and design projects for both private and public customers such as boutique hotel in Vama Veche or the CDRF building in Bucharest comprising a café space, exhibition hall and classroom, all dedicated to teaching and promoting photography. In more recent years the company designed and implemented several tactical urbanism projects for the improvement of public space. Their most recent project, “City as Classroom” focused on involving high school students in building third spaces for youth, as a means of regenerating the Urban Historical Area of Brașov. BAAB Architecture and urbanism is based in Bucharest, Romania.

Caleido, set-up for a public space and small pool (or softly covering a parking lot in Ferentari) The project is placed in Ferentari, Bucharest – a neighborhood famous for its large Roma community and significant social challenges (poverty, school drop-out, illiteracy, women abuse and many others). In 2022 the Amphitheater Foundation - our client, organized a festival aimed at boosting education and community spirit. The festival featured concerts by artists emerging out of the local music school, drawing and theater workshops for children and a theatre play each night, before the concert. Our office was commissioned to turn a sun burnt parking lot into a habitable oasis and welcoming oasis. The budget was small but sufficient. We worked with sandbags to build a small swimming pool. We used the existing trees and surrounding buildings to anchor a large shader over the pool. The design also featured a long social bench oriented towards the concert scene and several tables with umbrellas. The swimming pool was the main attraction of the event, and it was immediately flooded with children of all ages. They played as they cooled down. In the middle of the swimming pool, we placed a small lump that looked like an island. Children using it looked like seals, relaxing. The pool was so welcoming and generous that even some of the workshops moved inside it. Along with the swimming pool two other urban objects were used to create the new space: a very long bench and a large cover, providing shade for the swimming pool and the bench. By using large urban artefacts (the pool, the covering, the bench) we hoped to provide the setting for a collective spatial experience, for people to sit together, compelled to share the space. This was a great match with the local Roma community boasting street life and a culture of communal living. For three days the space created by the improvised swimming pool, the long bench and the large cover became the center of local communal life. It provided pretext for social interaction and for a playful occupation of the public realm. It also helped reduce the extreme heat, characteristic of parking lots in the summer months, and, together with the covering, it created a microclimate that allowed the space to be used all day long. The experiment was a continuation of our fascination with the use of large urban objects as a pretext for social engagement.