Romania to attend 17th edition of the International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia

Romania will attend the 17th edition of the International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, the Romanian Pavilion of the Giardini della Biennale to host, on Friday, May 21, starting 17:30, the Fading Borders exhibition. The Fading Borders project, authored by Irina Melita, Stefan Simion, Cristi Badescu, Stefania Hirleata and Radu Tirca from the POSTER architecture bureau was declared winner following a national selection contest organized in two stages, at the end of 2019 and start of 2020, according to a release of the Culture Ministry, sent on Wednesday to AGERPRES. "Fading Borders emphasizes and opens the conversation on the way in which the mobility of huge masses of people will have an impact on the way in which architects could imagine future forms of living, the wider sense. Migration has been, until now, a phenomenon associated to poverty, war, natural disasters, but the reality of migration must be brought to the center of discussions on the way in which we will live, about the way in which cities live, because, most probably, this phenomenon will expand and will be tied to the desire to improve the quality of life. Thus, we wish to initiate a constructive, positive debate, a look to the future, a hypothetical discussion on the way in which we will live when the word 'together' becomes very diverse and the length of stay gets a different dynamic," said architect Stefan Simion, quoted in the release. The project approaches the issue of migration and documents the reality of the phenomenon with the aid of two complementary research projects - PLECAT (Gone) and Shrinking cities in Romania, each approaching the same problem from different viewpoints. PLECAT, the journalism project done by the TELELEU team (Elena Stancu and Cosmin Bumbut), analyzes the complex phenomenon of living with Romanian migrants during the different local communities in Europe. Thus, they document the personal histories of various typologies of people, presenting, on the one hand, the difficulties the Romanian migrants face and, on the other hand, the opportunities encountered once they left the country or episodes about their new life and the community that they're building outside the country. "Shrinking Cities in Romania" is a research project of the IdeilaGram team, still ongoing. The project started following research started in 2009 on the decline and contraction of Romanian cities, seen as a mass phenomenon, and was a first in Romania in bringing to life this acute and omnipresent phenomenon which is ignored. Small tourist towns, large and small industrial cities, agricultural towns, old historical towns or Danube ports are facing various forms of decline: social-cultural, economic, physical or demographical. Despite the apparently negative connotations, the phenomenon of shrinkage is, in fact, a determining force of modernization and innovation, of reuse, of searching for alternative results, artistic creation, re-evaluating inter-human relations. Romania's participation in the Biennale di Venezia is organized by the Culture Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Union of Architects of Romania. The commissioner of this edition is architect Attila Kim, the curators being the POSTER Architecture Bureau (Stefan Simion, Irina Melita, Radu Tirca, Stefania Hirleata, Cristi Badescu).AGERPRES(RO - author: Daniel Popescu, editor: Mihai Simionescu; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Maria Voican)