Founded in 2016, BAZA. Deschidem orașul is an association with a cultural and educational purpose, aiming to connect city professionals (through podcasts, debates, events), conduct urban research, promote improvements in public spaces through human-scale architectural interventions, artistic projects, and tactical urbanism. The association also organizes workshops, events, conferences, and publications. It is proactive in its relationship with authorities, constantly organizing presentations and participating in meetings to disseminate study results within the administration
Project description in English
The Pretty Heap -
While wandering through the courtyard of Combinatul Fondului Plastic, we found it difficult to draw a clear line between art and remnants, organization, and chaos, valuable and worthless. This ambiguity seemed useful to us. It could be a key to interpreting the contemporary city and the need to reuse, integrate, and find resources in the most unexpected situations. Pastiche, degradation, become important in defining a design method based on embracing precariousness rather than pursuing expensive sublime. Our organization was asked to create a design for the main courtyard …obviously used as a parking lot. Past, future and present artwork, and debris filled the rest of the outdoor space. The chaotic grid of the existing parking lot became the starting point of the project. We reorganized and we aesthetically enhanced it. In each cell of the new parking grid, we displayed an object, or a group of objects retrieved from the Combinat's courtyard. Some of these were abandoned artwork, some were beautiful junk and others were art by coincidence. The process of selecting these artifacts meant exploring every nook and cranny of this huge courtyard, as well as delicate negotiations with the resident artists. Many of them refused to work with us. But gradually, the plots of the new parking lot at the Combinatul Fondului Plastic became a gallery of curiosities that challenged each visitor to a discussion: is this art? By using the parking lot as the basic spatial structure of the exhibition, we also discussed the relationship between car infrastructure and inhabited space. The parking lot is the dormant structure of the contemporary city. The attached diagram represents the model of the urban space we propose, starting from the spatial unit of the parking lot. It's a space that retains permeability but, in addition to cars, is augmented with art, shade, vegetation, places to sit, and a small room (12.5 sqm) that irrevocably demonstrates that even the parking lot can be "inhabited," that cars, during their long periods of rest, are primarily small architectures, not moving objects. We greeted Ruscha, Scott Brown & Venturi, and in the postmodern grid of the parking lot, we intervened with our own menagerie of objects, typical of Eastern Europe in the 21st century. By the end we asked ourselves if the same could be done for the contemporary city? If the arid parking lots could be the base for a new type of urban space?
