Romanian Design Week 2024 - Central Exhibition

Authors’ Comment

Romanian Design Week is the most important national event that brings together all fields of creative industries. All the RDW editions so far have assumed yet another important role in Bucharest's cultural life: that of revealing and presenting to the public for the first time unused, forgotten, on the verge of change or newly completed buildings.

The 2024 edition came with a brave proposal and a difficult design theme: the exhibition was organized in the building that housed the Cina restaurant, one of the most emblematic buildings of Bucharest, an architectural, urban and historical reference, which for more than 20 years has been closed to the public. After being in an advanced state of decay, renovation works have already started today.

Over the past decades, started and abandoned architectural interventions have completely transformed the building, partially unifying the levels and introducing concrete and metal reinforcement elements. The building was used 10-15 years ago several times for parties, during which graffiti works appeared on the walls, signed by artists who in the meantime became internationally known. The exhibition project, proposes both from a curatorial and architectural point of view, the integration of these large-scale graffiti works.

The exhibition divided on three different levels, according to the curatorial and organizational structures, by using minimal resources, proposes an intervention with an assumed ephemeral character. The main architectural element is the white, translucent curtain, used both to provide a backdrop for framed photographs and to define new architectural spaces, joining two levels and forming a stage for mannequins. The reuse of scenographic elements from previous editions is one of the pillars of the exhibition architecture that our office has established since the first collaboration with RDW in 2013, thus we can find in new formulas the metal frames made in 2014, the neon signs purchased in 2018 or the plants used in 2023.

This autumn, between October 3-13, the space designed for RDW was reimagined by our team to host DIPLOMA, a national exhibition showcasing the best diploma works of art, architecture and design universities.