The ArhiPera Association is a Romanian NGO composed mostly of architects. It aims to improve the living conditions of vulnerable groups within communities in extreme poverty through an integrated approach. Throughout the years ArchiPera has developed a methodology, a model and a policy of intervention in vulnerable communities that can be extended at the national level. The integrated approach includes employment, housing construction, social assistance, medical assistance and community development through culture. Summer schools are part of ArhiPera’s activities, this one being the twelfth of them.
This year amongst the invited lecturers and tutors there is also Elina Alatalo from Insurgent Spatial Practices collective. Two other international lecturers come from Netherlands: architects Sebastiaan Veldhuisen and Willie Vogel from Delft University, added with Viviana Comito from École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris. Supported with local ArchiPera team, the aim is to form four groups of students, each guided by one international tutor. Groups will collaborate with local pupils from Chiojdu, to design and build a part of a pavilion to their school yard. Pavilion will offer shelter from sun, most probably including also elements of play, socializing and nature. Idea is to build a prototype that can then be realized also in other school yards, including the inner yard of “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban planning in Bucharest.
Transversal themes:
- low-cost/recycled architecture
- sustainable/biophilic design that supports biodiversity
- flexible architecture in modular structures that could assemble in various ways
- prefabricated elements
- mono/bi-material
Objectives:
- Educating the students on social inclusion, participation, resilient design, activism through architecture, sustainable structures, community engagement, applied research through architecture in the field of social sciences
- Educating the local pupils on environmental and society problems and how architecture can provide a valid response to the existing context
- Designing in a participatory manner and producing a prototype of volume 0 social architecture, intended for the use of pupils in the recreations/open educational activities
- Building the prototype
Activities:
- Knowing the place and community
- Lectures of the invited professors
- Participatory design, together with the pupils of the local school
- Building the prototype of the social inclusive open structure
- Celebration
You can also follow ArhiPera in Facebook
Image: poster of ArchiPera Summer School