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European Neighborhood
"NEIGHBOURHOOD AS ARCHIPELAGO"
Augustin Ioan, PhD, Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest
Starting from the positions provided by Heidegger in the „Origin of the work of art” and in „Building, dwelling, thinking”, the presentation brings into discussion the link between the two terms as being far deeper that its etymology and that by freeing the place – neighbourhood couple of its weak linguistic founding, it is possible to ground it more firmly on the more stable grounds of inhabiting as reciprocal investment between delimitation and proximity.

Contemporary Neighbourhood
"THE APOLOGY OF THE STILE"
Vintila Mihailescu, Professor, PhD, director of the Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest
“I was visiting a village in Bulgaria, not far away from the Danube. A village of Bulgarians and Vallachians. The latter spoke Romanian, even though they were not willing to think of themselves as Romanians. Nor Bulgarian, by the way… Then how come you speak Romanian? – I asked them. The explanation came naturally: See, at winter the Danube freezes and then our lads go to meet the girls in Romania, in the midst of the icy Danube, they see each other and if they like each other, they wed. In the midst of the Danube… Limit, frontier, the Danube becomes a bridge, a sort of stile the young lovers leap over in winter. The limit was always a cause for weddings… We all live on a limit. I do not mind this, but marginalization, the obtuse fixation on the limit that becomes periphery, killing all freedom to leap over the stile!

discussions

Contemporary Neighborhood
"LESS ORDINARY VICINITIES"
Mariana Celac, architect , theorist, writer, Bucharest
The presentation reveals aspects of vicinity in conditions of extreme deprivation. What kind of relationships are woven? What kind of values function? Hoe can we approach this type of reality in a contry that is now a member of the European Union?

Revitalising the Neibghborhood
" RAHOVA, THE URBAN LOUNGE "
Teodor Frolu , architect, co-manager of DC Communication, Bucharest
In the general context of public space theories, neighborhood can be perceived as an extension of private space. A group of architects propose a transformation of an abandoned area of the city, located in the vicinity of the House of the People, into an alternative culture area, inside which the private spaces are offered to the inhabitants of the city. The city as network of urban rooms proposes a definition of identity routes meant to stop the deterioration process of the public character of urban space.