IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

Centuries of accumulation of resources, over-extraction, and production have turned into a global crisis. Ironically the architectural responses involve extracting and building more. While conventional preservation models hint at models of changing conventions of building new, they need holistic approaches. This paper will focus on the preservation models in Romania, particularly the Maramures region in northern Transylvania. This thesis zooms into a site in Costiui/Ronaszek, a salt mining settlement rich in building practices yet entangled with political instability and touristic engagements. A place in transition from mining economies to salt bathing, now the site abandoned calls into question future potentials. Firstly, questioning the role of architecture in solving issues with building more rather than a methodology or process. Secondly, contesting the dimension between local and global, to problematize binary positions between local and global, where transformation of local with global overview is a terrestrial problem. Thirdly, the lack of care and repair are undervalued apparatuses in architectural speculation, where tabula rasa becomes the most dominated modus operandi and how conventional preservation models freeze buildings. How small of intervention can architecture proposals make with the greatest possible effect? The project aims at a garden of cultivated fields of relations, patchworks, articulations, and interpretations to create an atlas of what a place is or simply to care for it. The atlas becomes a tool of resistance against conventional ways of approaching ruins to reveal what is already at hand to build upon.