The Bucharest Architecture Annual is a yearly event dedicated to promoting excellence in architecture, organized by the Romanian Order of Architects’ Bucharest Branch. During it, awards are given under several categories. ArhiPera Summer School received recognition in the category of research through architecture, architecture and experiments.
ArhiPera is a non-profit association of Romanian architects that aims to improve the living conditions of vulnerable groups within communities living in extreme poverty through an integrated approach. ArhiPera has for e.g. built homes and medical centers with and for Roma people in different locations in Romania. There are currently more than 60 realized projects, that are all based on participation and most of them also integrated into extra curriculum teaching of architects.
ArhiPera has organised altogether 12 Summer Schools. Theme of the Summer School 2024 was Sustainability through community building. Summer School has been organized several times in the mountains of Romania, in a vulnerable village called Chiojdu. This has built trust between the association, students and the village people. Projects build up through the sequence of the years and needs are recognized together. While village develops, the students of architecture learn to do participatory design. Students also get to hear lectures from international tutors and discuss themes outside the normal curricula of their education.
Summer 2024 focused on designing shading and activating wooden small structures to the yard of the school of small children, together with them. Prototypes also got built during and after the Summer School, as well as exhibited in Bucharest during the autumn 2024. Many students join the Summer School durign several years, which accumulate the shared know how. Amongst the projects developed to Chiojdu there is e.g. a community center and a refuge house for people, usually women, who fleed domestic violence.
Amongst the Summer School organisers there was also Elina Alatalo from Insurgent Spatial Practices. As a tutor, she was responsible of co-designing the design task for architecture students, tutoring one group of students, planning the interaction with pupils of the school and giving a couple of theme related lectures. Elina is participating to ArhiPera Summer School also in August 2025.
Read more of the Jury’s Distinction and the Summer School from here. There you can find also photos of the week and the designs made during the Summer School. The wooden structures of summer 2024 are shown also here and you can find more photos of the week here.
In addition, there is a documentary film (17 minutes) made of the Summer School of 2024, as well as a publication that collects together the different teaching experiments of ArhiPera association. This publication got a Jury’s Distinction as well, in the category of Architectural Books.