LIMITS…. IN THE OLD WORLD, IN OUR VILLAGE

Authors’ Comment

A journey in search of the limits of the old world to understand the present

The boundaries, of the village or of the dwelling, are delimitations that over time have taken various forms, which have passed over pandemics and epidemics… This was the premise of the LIMITE Summer School…. IN THE OLD WORLD, IN OUR VILLAGE, held in Sibiu, in July, with the intention of learning from the past how our predecessors related to their limits, when and why the limits appeared and how they became part of everyone's life by defining and transmitting models.

Not coincidentally, the subject of the Venice Architecture Biennale is, How will we live together? - And discusses the normality of life in the community as normal, utopia, dystopia or manifesto. The reverse exercise of repositioning towards limits, in the global context of the last two years of all imposed, necessary and - last but not least - virtual barriers, involved an immersion in the rural space and in its pictorial representation, a transition from contemplation to touch. Through an intervention based on non-formal education dedicated to young architects, an applied discovery was proposed, a way back to the vernacular past for a better representation of the present. “LIMITE” Summer School. IN THE OLD WORLD, IN OUR VILLAGE, the aim was to find the limits in a physical (Astra National Museum Complex) and transpose them into the universe of pictorial representations (Brukenthal National Museum), primordial forms of the vernacular universe of the village.

Based on non-formal higher education and intuitive observation, the project aimed at approaching the vernacular universe and understanding the reconstructed material cultural heritage as an exponent of model value resistance. Old households viewed as exponents of boundaries were the basis for discovering relationships - applicable to both childhood and adulthood. This intuitive understanding and experimentation were in fact mechanisms for opening the village universe to the local community and, at the same time, mechanisms of understanding to another level of the pieces from the museum ensemble, specific to the Astra National Museum Complex. In architecture, perhaps, more than in other fields, the understanding of heritage is the basis for the conservation, assimilation and protection of perennial values, of a universe of past experiences.

The Summer School is a non-formal higher education project, supported by younger generations of architects who started their training at / with the LIMITATIONS imposed by SARS-CoV2 and developed in the area of ​​the Astra National Museum Complex and transposed into the Brukenthal National Museum. This was intended to be an applied research of the boundaries that contextually define vernacular architecture. The students, who were trained during the pandemic - training translated into imposed limits and reduced contacts with architectural realities - were guided by a team of architects, specialists and authors of projects, conferences and articles with visibility.

Typology: summer school, non-formal education, university
Disciplines: architectural theory, architectural criticism, visual arts
Purpose: applied exercises aiming at: identifying the elements of comparative architecture, case studies, relating the elements sensitive to the built environment, prioritizing the constructive elements, etc.

Data: 6 days in Sibiu / 14 days in Bucharest / 54 architecture students / 10 invited lecturers / 47 objectives studied in the village museum / 35 paintings analyzed in the Brukenthal museum / over 120 hours of graphic illustration / etc.