Cultural Ensemble for the quarry-lakes of Jimbolia

Authors’ Comment

The Jimbolia Quarry Lakes represents a complex cultural landscape, born from the industrial activity of ceramic products that marked the history of this place since 1864. This history shaped the identity of the local community, even after the industry ceased 130 years later. Currently, in the area we find an ecosystem rich in biodiversity, formed as a result of industrial decline. In the absence of any material trace attesting to the industrial story of the place, found today only in the collective memory of the community that lived it, it risks disappearing with the passing of generations. The project aimed to create a functional and tangible anchor through which local cultural values could be reactivated and promoted, bringing the narrative of the place back into a contemporary context.

The project started from the conception of a comprehensive strategic systematization that would create, at the macro level, a coherent and unitary image. This systematization consisted in the implementation of a masterplan of the area, which aims to integrate a series of inserts in the landscape in a grid related to the local and territorial network. This network, made up of points, joints in the landscape, dialogues with the central piece - the cultural ensemble, conveying the idea of a museum that extends over the entire area.

The ensemble was composed of two main functions. The Micro Museum of Industrial Memory represents the tourist component of the complex, a static element that presents the industrial history of the place. The lack of traces and artifacts of that period calls for a scenographic approach, through which the museum manages to, using collective memory, convey stories on a human scale. The narrative is made up of a series of 6 sequences that reflect this industrial story from the point of view of the social dimension, presenting the impact of the ceramic products industry on the condition of the working class. The 6 sequences materialize through two mirrored rooms. The exterior museum presents the themes in a scenographic way based on the architecture of the space, while the interior museum opts for a more didactic presentation of them.

This ensemble takes a linear form, starting from the intention to tell the story through an Aristotelian narrative thread, with the structure of prologue - middle - epilogue. The linear gesture creates a clear direction in the landscape, connecting two images representative of the history of the place: the site of the former Bohn factory and the sunken bagger of the Szeles lake. This gesture is materialized in the form of a brick wall, which, doubled, contains within itself the spaces of the cultural ensemble. The additional spaces of the ensemble adopt an architecture that presents clearly defined forms, separated from the main linear volume.

The architecture uses the brick in a tectonic approach, through which it aims to create an architecture rooted in time and space. Thus, the project calls for a deep and sophisticated reading, between the lines, using architecture in an almost literary sense. The architecture is configured not so much to shelter as to create the mise-en-scène of a carefully directed spatial experience. The line is actually a phrase and a story. Architecture is both direction and scenography. Along it the space can be described in acts. The wall as intrigue. The material as leitmotif. Space as a stylistic figure. Form as metaphor. The route as an epic thread towards a final act.