Stepping into the Romanian Pavilion at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale feels a bit like getting lost in a rather bizarre dark and futuristic building in which the space is marked by curious light-emitting pillars. Mechanical bleeps and assorted electronic sounds can be heard in the background, but it's only when you get nearer each pillar that you realise the latter are actually interactive tables accessorised with special tools that allow the visitors to play at being Romanian architect Ion Mincu.
Entitled "Play Mincu: The Architecture Stamp" this project - initiated by Emil Ivanescu, Laura Iosub, Irina Bogdan, Ana Constantinescu and Paul Popescu - is dedicated to the memory of Romanian architect Ion Mincu, founder of the Architecture University of Bucharest. Mincu graduated in engineering in Bucharest and then applied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he remained until 1883, returning to his homecountry the following year to start working on his first projects (among the others there is also the restoration of the Stavropoleos Church). Architect, engineer and politician, Mincu represents a sort of Romanian archetype for the modern intellectual.
The space inside the pavilion is divided in different parts: on some tables visitors will find official stamps from various countries, on others notary-like dry seals, while in another area they will discover strange seals that, once pressed, produce a sound. This is actually a sort of game about officialdom and architecture revolving around Mincu and the meaning of the word “stamp”.
Romania has one of the longest postage stamp traditions in Europe: the Penny Back was issued in the UK in 1840, while Moldavia and Walachia launched the Auroch's head stamp in 1858. Stamps have a visual power as there is usually an image printed upon them (at times they show a building or a monument, so architecture, or they may hint at the products of a specific country, see for example the "Italian Design" series of stamps in the first video in this post, around 2:45), but they also have strong political meanings since they refer to specific countries issuing them, so they can be conceived as territorially grounded elements. The word also refers to the “architecture stamp” that proves that a tax has been paid by the beneficiary of architectural services to the professional organisation of architects.
The notary seal is an official tool and, through this mechanical-tactile installation, visitors can emboss on blank sticky stamps or on their own documents images of iconic contemporary Romanian buildings designed by architects mainly educated at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism.
The sonorous stamp is instead a dematerialisation of everyday objects and signs, the result of a thermal scan of a real stamp. Each stamp, transformed into sounds, is accompanied by a quote about architecture by a wide range of people, from Seneca to Michelangelo, from Charlie Chaplin to Coco Chanel (for that fashion-architecture link...), from Le Corbusier to Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rem Koolhaas.
There is also a lot of irony in this highly interactive and clever installation that tries to look at architecture in a playful way: stamps and dry seals are usually respected by law and citizens, but, by applying random architectural dry seals of approval on all the documents they want, visitors will be able to invest them of a sort of "unofficial" authority.
In some countries such as a Romania or Italy, there seems to be a genuine obsession with bureaucracy and with official stamps from figures like notaries, does the background research for this installation move from there?
Emil Ivanescu: The main inspiration actually comes from Ion Mincu, the most important 20th century architect in Romania. He invented Romanian Architecture Style mixing traditional elements with “brancovenesc” style, becoming throughout the decades a sort of a symbol, a sign, in a nutshell a stamp. Apart from being an inventor of architecture, he was also a politician, he sat as a MP in the Parliament of Romania and chaired The Architect Order of Romania. This is Ion Mincu's year in Romania and we thought about how to present him in a sort of game about creating architecture and making politics. In many countries, not just in Romania or in other Eastern European countries, architects put an official stamp on their projects and blueprints. This is a banal, yet totalitarian act in a way. In some countries people even pay architects to put their stamps on someone else's projects. This installation makes fun of all these bureaucratic situations.
In which ways did you tackle the main theme of this Biennale, Common Ground, in this installation?
Emil Ivanescu: The entire installation represents a “Common Ground” for the architectural profession. Moving from Mincu who was very politically engaged, we wanted to create something that spoke about the links between bureaucracy, politics and creative architecture. We wondered through this installation how to equate creativity with bureaucracy. The “Common Ground” in the architectural profession is this tension, this fight between the creative side and the bureacratic side: you can design everything in your studio or at architecture school, you can explore and invent whatever you want. But if you want to implement your research, interact and work with the real society out there or with different organisations, you have to fight with bureaucracy, norms, rules official positions and so on. You must wear some beautiful clothes at a cocktail party and mingle with important people and all that. So this is the “common ground” for us, the background for a profession suspended between creativity and official rules, and the pavilion is a sort of laboratory that symbolically represents the background for our profession.
What prompted you to experiment even further and present a “sonorous stamp”?
Emil Ivanescu: We wanted to tackle a variety of aspects through this installation. We developed a concept - the sound stamp - representing a sign of dematerialisation of other signs. The physical stamp was transformed into a feeling, into a sensation. Architecture started as a visual medium, but nowadays architects also want to work with other media, so we tried to deconstruct the physical sign in an original way and create an official sign without using a visual support. You recognise a specific politician when you see him or her and a political building because of its visual impact, but how do you recognise an “official sound”? Yes, you may argue we do have “official sounds” in national anthems, but in our case it is impossible to recognise the official sound created by a specific official stamp. Technology-wise we used a program that has a thermal scanning feature, then an algorithm transforms the scanned bits into sounds. If you put your headphones on you can hear a chaotic yet interesting sound, in some cases it feels a bit like going underwater and hearing anomalies in the sound field such as echoes, dead spots and sound nodes. It's amazing to discover that these anomalies in sound actually come from stamps, but it's also real fun.
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Much like when it comes to fashion, these things require a lot of imagination and sheer creativity. Only the people that work hard with the brightest and widest of imaginations can be successful at these line of work. I'm sure that you guys are one of them, because these work are amazing.
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