Forest of Arts - Cultural Center & Artist Residencies Timișoara

Authors’ Comment

CREATION - EXPOSURE - COMMUNITY

Preamble
The solution emerges from an analysis of contemporary artistic spaces, aimed at facilitating both the understanding of the creative process and the process itself. It seeks to blur the boundaries between the "consumer" of art, the artist, and the architectural space, forming a macrocosm of human experience through artistic acts.
Simultaneously, this space becomes part of a larger macrocosm of the neighborhood and city, enhancing its surroundings by occupying and revitalizing an unused space.
The Contemporary Arts Center also serves as a Cultural Center, becoming a significant cultural hub in Timișoara, and through its international artistic residencies, it extends beyond national borders.

Issues
In response to the lack of artistic spaces outside the central ring of Timișoara, this proposal of a Contemporary Arts Center and Artist Residencies addresses current demands and fills missing cultural links.
The artist is offered a "place" to create, display, and exist as an individual within an artistic community for a designated period. Artists may be local, early-career students, or established professionals, from Romania or abroad.
The main spaces accommodate both traditional visual arts (painting, sculpture, drawing) and experimental arts (installations, VR architecture presentations), alongside small-scale performing arts (dance, plays with small casts). This flexibility turns the building into a versatile place where the artistic community resides.

Why this site?
The allure of a triangular site near the park.
Due to the lack of cultural infrastructure in Timișoara’s outskirts, a peripheral location is a logical choice.
The generous site near Lidia-Pădurice Park, the city’s former nursery, perfectly meets the project's requirements. One of the site's key qualities is its capacity to host a standalone architectural object, potentially with four or even five dimensions (including the terrace).
The relationship between the park and the adjacent collective housing, currently fragmented, can be mended through construction, creating multiple new connections.
The building’s height responds to the surrounding apartment blocks, with a taller volume acting as a barrier or, conversely, engaging in dialogue with them. The façade facing the park is irregular and fragmented, where the barrier gives way to large glass surfaces, allowing movement through a wide space, extending the park.
These dominant relationships are further reinforced by "end points," one oriented towards the residential area in the south, the other towards a major traffic artery, becoming a height landmark and breaking the rigid 9.5 x 18 grid, thus becoming the "exception that strengthens the rule."