For ten years, Beta has been awarding quality architectural initiatives and projects in Romania, Hungary and Serbia. The international jury for each edition is made up of renowned architects, and the awards reflect our determination to promote authors and projects with a beneficial impact on the built environment.
For the first time in this competition, we have introduced the People's Award, through which we aim to improve the connection between architects and the general public, emphasizing the importance of architecture that directly addresses the values and needs of society.
We all live in and use the city and the spaces that architects design, so we want the Beta Awards to recognize the preferences of the general public. The Public Award is our way of bringing quality architecture closer to the general public and promoting those architectural projects that make us proud of the cities we live in. Each person can vote for one project in the categories of Built Space, Interior Space, Public Space, Graduate Projects and Research.
The public vote will be open together with the awards exhibition and will run until the end of the competition, when the project with the most votes will be awarded at the Beta 2024 Awards Gala.
The ALT+A Association is a non-governmental, non-profit, independent, apolitical and public benefit organization. The purpose of the ALT+A Association is to promote education, scientific research, cultural and educational assistance, and social responsibility, especially in the fields of architecture, urban planning and visual arts. The founding members of the ALT+A Association are the architects Nely Vînău, Tiberiu Teodor-Stanciu and Răzvan Nica, teaching staff at the Faculty of Architecture in Iași. Passionate about graphic design, cinematography and obviously architecture, since 2022 they are organizing the workshop and lectures SF(a): Society. Film. Architecture. SF(a) is a cross-disciplinary initiative that emphasizes non-formal educational tools and uses science-fiction cinema as a common point of reference. The selected films depict hypothetical dystopian societies, temporal sequences still distant but not impossible, which give new perspectives on alternative social structures. For each edition, a cult movie representative of a historical era and an architectural style is chosen: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and Post-modernism, Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1929) and Modernism, A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) and Brutalism.
The ALT+A association is a team in constant (re)search for educational alternatives in the field of architecture and visual arts.
Project description in English
Architecture is deeply embedded in our society and culture, narrating the story of our progress, values, and aspirations. However, the deeper meaning behind a building’s design can often be elusive. Although we may admire the aesthetic elements of architecture, each structure holds a deeper essence. To genuinely understand and appreciate architecture, we must look beyond its physical structures and explore the stories it tells. That’s where cinematography comes into play ... SF(a) Season 3 theme: A Clockwork Orange & Brutalism._Genre: Architecture, Cinematography and Illustration workshop._Target group: 108 registered participants; architecture, visual arts & design, and letters students._Workshop outcomes: 57 Alternative posters and 19 Literary and Film Chronicles. _The process was divided in 7 scenes: 1 - Case study starting from the movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’; 2 - Open discussions on the connections between the narrative and brutalist architecture; 3&4 - Hermeneutic deconstruction of ‘A Clockwork Orange‘ (lectures and open discussions structured around distinct areas of knowledge – architecture, history and philosophy, design, visual culture, literature, and technology); 5: The potentiality: The Alternative Poster Laboratory (Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator tutorial and open discussion on alternative posters) & Literary and film chronicle Laboratory (brainstorming in mixed groups starting from the novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burges); 6: Guided tour of Iași with Dan Perjovschi and Silviu Teodor-Stanciu in the Liberty Tram with the theme Collective memory and personal experiences from the city of Iasi during the totalitarian regime; 7: Alternative posters and Literary and film chronical exposition. _The 2024 SF(a) lecturers were: Dan Perjovschi (visual artist), Dana Vais (Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, UTCN), Matei Bejenaru (Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, UNAGE), Anca Horvath (Research Laboratory for Art and Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark), Radu Cucuteanu (historian and publicist), Viola Ruhse (University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria), Emanuela Ilie (Faculty of Letters, UAIC), Silviu Teodor-Stanciu, (Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, UNAGE). The laboratories were conducted by tutors from the Faculty of Architecture - TUIASI: Nely Vînău,Tiberiu Teodor-Stanciu, Ana Cristina Tudora, Gabriel Tudora. _SF(a) – season 3 project was supported by Romanian Order of Architects from the Architectural Stamp Duty.