SHARE Forum brought together international architects, engineers and contractors in Bucharest

During 21-22 March 2017, the International Forum of Architecture and Engineering SHARE took place with a series of conferences at the JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel. SHARE Forum is the largest event dedicated to architects, engineers and contractors taking place in the first half of the year. Its themes revolved around four professional directions: INGLASS – International  glass architecture and engineering expo conference, LAUD -International landscape architecture & urban infrastructure expo conference, GIS – International interior architecture and design expo conference) and CONTRACTOR – International building services engineering expo conference.  The event has been organized by ABplus Events and Architects Order of Romania.

“To inspire is a fundamental form of generosity. It is what we want to achieve with our partners through the SHARE events”, said arch. Şerban Ţigănaş, the chairman of SHARE Bucharest 2017.

SHARE BUCHAREST 2017 is a dynamic event that includes four professional conferences: INGLASS – International  glass architecture and engineering expo conference, LAUD -International landscape architecture & urban infrastructure expo conference, GIS – International interior architecture and design expo conference) and CONTRACTOR – International building services engineering expo conference.

In the first day of the event, the architect Luke Lowings, partner of Carpenter Lowings Architecture and Design in UK, opened INGLASS – International  glass architecture and engineering expo conference. His lecture focused on a single housing project in Hong Kong including a fully glazed interior stair.

 „The main approaches that we’ve taken is to minimize the structure so you can see the light within the glass and therefore any engineering advances or thought we’ve had were in this purpose. We’ve noticed that if you make a very elaborate and complicated engineering structure, that distracts sometimes from what you are actually looking at whether through the glass or reflected in the glass or held within the glass somehow. We are talking about the quality of the experience and for that you do have to involve the best engineers and fabricators to guarantee the best quality of the project to actually get that quality of experience. I think that you just got to look very hard at your surroundings, look at what it is that you want to show, and don’t lower your standards. It’s very very easy to accept what you’re given. Keep trying for the best and enjoy it.” – this was the architect’s message towards young professionals.

LAUD -International landscape architecture & urban infrastructure expo conference took place in the second day of SHARE 2017 involving the intervention of the Romanian landscape architect of French origins Nicolas Triboi, founder of Atelier Foaie Verde. Mr. Triboi spoke about the idea of a productive landscape in the area of the Old Petricani-Davila Domain. He finished his studies at Ecole nationale supérieure de la nature et du paysage de Blois and since 2001 he started his own practice in Romania dealing with landscape problems in rural and agricultural areas. His presentation focused on the Romanian rural setting and the potential to create a pilot project that could help develop such areas in a coherent way.

The architect approached in an interview with the SHARE team the issue of working with the landscape in the urban areas and he said that: „there has to be a local coordinator to deal with mobilizing administrative forces where there are problems, be it an architect, urban planner, economist, writer, poet… it doesn’t really matter, the idea is to find the right person to interact with people and create bonds and potential for beneficial projects. The city is not only the domain of the architect.”

The two days of GIS – the International interior architecture and design expo conference brought together a series of local and international personalities concerned with the build environment, from which we mention:  Arch. Andrei Șerbescu (ADNba, Bucharest), arch. Mario Kuibuș (Re-Act Now, Bucharest), Arch. Liong Lie (123DV, the Netherlands), Arch. Raul Roche Figueiredo (Pitagoras Group, Portugal), arch. Frits van Dongen (van Dongen – Koschuch, the Netherlands), Arch. Christian Karlsson (Karlsson Architects, Denmark) or Arch. Angel Zahariev (A&A Architects, Bulgaria).

Frits van Dongen, director and architect of van Dongen–Koschuch Architects and Planners was a guest speaker at SHARE Forum where he presented “The Kampanje” Theater in Den Helder – a project for which the practice received the Arie Keppler Award in 2016. The project is a beautiful illustration of van Dongen–Koschuch activity, being both a restauration of an old abandoned complex of maritime buildings and a shifting towards a cultural use, urban oriented. “The question was how to build a theater there. When I saw the existing construction, it amazed me. The building was so beautiful and I thought that I should leave it that way. When I used the glass and make just a glass hall it lets space to admire the building.”

In the end, van Dongen gave an advice for the upcoming architects: “You must have dreams, dreams, dreams. As an architect, when you have a dream, try to fight for it and in the end it will come true. If you don’t have dreams, you are not a creative architect.”

Resembling GIS conference, CONTRACTOR – International building services engineering expo-conference took place during both the two days of the SHARE forum and joined  Prof. Eng. Dorin Beu (chairman of the conference and the president of Romanian Green Buildings Council), Arch. Anna Ramos (director of the Mies van der Rohe Foundation), Arch. Michael Grubb (Michael Grubb Design Studio Lighting Design London &UK), Arch Stefan Paskucz (9 OPTIUNE – Birou de arhitectură, Romania), the designer Ayrim Yaser Talu (Zeve Lighting Design Office, Turkey), Arch. Marius Ichim and many more.

Dorin Beu, the President of Romanian Green Building Council, was the chairman of CONTRACTOR LIGHTING conference and he emphasized the necessity to bring comfort and safety in dwelling spaces by using appropriate lighting. “We can have a good quality natural lighting or an artificial comfortable electric lighting by respecting European requirements in order to achieve an atmosphere of well-being. The requirements exist and are correctly established but they also have to be respected. We have a problem with respecting these norms in our public environment: schools, universities, town-halls, while the developers of the private sector seek another approach in their office spaces because their clients look for green buildings.”

One of the most appreciated lighting designers in UK, Michael Grubb held a presentation about the importance of light and the way it can become a narrating instance in the story that the architect wants to tell the public.  For almost 20 years, Grubb was devotedly passionate about lighting design trying to include beside the rare beauty of his projects, issues concerning the social realities of our world. Therefore, his involvement doesn’t stop at great scale projects (like the lighting strategy for a series of parks in Moscow or the Olympic Park in UK) but also developed charity projects like RE:LIT – initiated in 2013 – in order to recycle lighting equipment by involving local communities.

”RE:LIT is a response to the waste of lightning equipment, especially in the modern age of the LED technology. We collect the products they don’t need from manufactures and we involve the local community into the process to insure they have a direct connection with the project. A successful project is one that the people take ownership, so they maintain and look after”, said the architect.

Collateral event: IGLOO TALKS     

“Among the other collateral events are the debates, one in each of the two days of the forum. The first one, Igloo Talks, was powered by the Igloo magazine and moderated by the Igloo editors. Here an international panel tried to question how the architect and architecture itself can reposition themselves facing contemporary reality – yet another look towards the future. The other debate is very important given its newly adopted format which will be reiterated in Iași, Cluj and Timișoara: it is a meeting between Romanian architects and the ones belonging to a neighboring country where we can find similar problems. This time we had the extraordinary surprise to meet the best Ukrainian architects and we started to discuss common issues, overlaps and possible solutions”, emphasized Șerban Țigănaș about the new format of the debates inside ABPlus events.

Collateral event: EU Mies van der Rohe Awards 2017 Exhibition in Bucharest

In the evening of the first day of conferences, the SHARE Forum inaugurated also the EU Mies van der Rohe AWARDS 2017 Exhibition at the „Ion Mincu” Architecture and Planning University in Bucharest, in collaboration with OAR, PRO Event, OAR Bucharest and UAUIM. The exhibition may be visited between 22 and 28 March. The European Prize for Contemporary Architecture is offered every two years and celebrates architectural excellency. This year’s exhibition brings together the 355 projects submitted and the 40 short-listed projects. In addition, there have been included the 211 diploma projects submitted for the Young Talent Architecture Award 2016 (YTAA).

“The exhibition shows the 355 nominated projects for the EU Mies Awards 2017. It is organized in terms of showing different programs: collective housing, single housing, education, production and consumption and not in terms of the countries of provenance, although it has projects participating from 40 national countries. We don’t want to point the differences between one country and another. If somebody is interested to see how a single house can be, just come here and look at the collection of beautiful single houses built across Europe. So that is why we are doing it: to show the general public how best architecture is and by doing so we want the general public to demand quality architecture everywhere in daily life”, added Anna Ramos, the director of the Mies van der Rohe Foundation about this itinerant exhibition.

After the official opening of the exhibition, Guerrilla Lighting organized an event that uses light as an urban intervention instrument – a concept developed by Light Collective of Martin Lupton&Sharon Stammers. Guerrilla Lighting is a very simple effective method to empower people to change urban lighting. During this event, 4 buildings in the University square were included.

In the official plenary closing session of SHARE Forum, the organizers launched the Romanian Building Awards 2017. The award aims to raise the issues of the collaboration between the different actors in the building environment, the representatives of construction industries and clients. Moreover, RBA seeks to emphasize the creative trio architect – constructor – client and to evaluate social, cultural, economic impact of projects in terms of life quality, aesthetical and technical requirements.

Sheila Sri Prakash, special guest speaker at SHARE 2017 and the founder of Shilpa Architects Planners Designers, held a presentation to conclude this event. One of the first Indian females to establish her own practice Shilpa Architects in Chennai in 1979, she is now a world-renowned personality, a global leader in sustainability in architecture promoting an environmental-friendly design and sociologically sensitive planning.

 „A major challenge for today’s architecture is how you manage as an architect to marry two main directions: populist measures and what you know as a professional that will give better results in a given situation. I am trying to energize my buildings by using local materials and technology”, said the architect in the interview for the SHARE team.

Also, Sheila Sri Prakash is known for her teaching activity at renowned universities. She had an inspirational conference at „Ion Mincu” Architecture and Planning University in Bucharest sending a message to Romanian students: „One thing that I find interesting about architects is that we are all creatives and we seldom work together. The challenge is therefore how to work together in spite of being creative because we need to collaborate for a cause. That is my agenda: to see that the younger generation gets together.”

Next SHARE event is the Inspirational International Conference “NEW CITIES” in Iași, where the invited country is the Netherlands. The “New Cities” conferences address a new vision of development of cities adapted to contemporary urban challenges and quality of life in the city. The conferences develop the philosophy of a “human city”, promoting participation and involvement in city life, the way in which the individual must be brought back to the heart of future urban planning dialogue. Please consult http://rba.share-architects.com/

Written by Patricia Erimescu and Ruxandra Grigoras, Associate Editors share-architects.com