Tackling gaps and mismatches in the filed of higher education for architecture and urban planning
Triplex Confinium is the first strategic partnership between the architecture schools within the DKMT Euroregion focused on the spatial heritage of minor settlements and towns set along the borders of Romania, Hungary and Serbia. Its main objective is to create awareness, among local actors, tutors and students of our common BAUKULTUR as well as to imagine ways of addressing its strengths and weaknesses using a complex toolkit, combining various pluridisciplinar tactical approaches.
Cross-border/international
Romania
Hungary
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Serbia
DKMT Euroregion, Municipalities of Jimbolia (RO) and Kikinda (SRB) as case studies for the implemented learning teaching training activities with the participation of students and tutors form the faculties of architecture in Timisoara (RO), Bucharest (RO), Budapest BME (HU), Debrecen (HU), Novi Sad(SRB), the Sociology Department in Cuj-Napoca UBB (RO), and the Geography Faculty in Sofia (BG)
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
ERASMUS
Erasmus Strategic Partnership for Higher Education, Key action 2
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Universitatea Politehnica, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Cristian Last name of representative: Blidariu Gender: Male Nationality: Romania If relevant, please select your other nationality: Romania Function: Dean, Lead Partner Project manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Piata Victoriei nr 2 Town: Timisoara Postal code: 300006 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 723 335 266 E-mail:cristian.blidariu@upt.ro Website:https://triplex-confinium.eu/
Name of the organisation(s): UNIVERZITET U NOVOM SADU, Department of Architecture Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Bojan Last name of representative: Tepavčević Gender: Male Nationality: Serbia If relevant, please select your other nationality: Serbia Function: Partner Project manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: str. DR ZORANA DINDICA Town: Novi Sad Postal code: 21000 Country: Serbia Direct Tel:+381 63 8878589 E-mail:tepavcevicb@uns.ac.rs Website:http://www.arhns.uns.ac.rs/cdd/
Name of the organisation(s): BUDAPESTI MUSZAKI ES GAZDASAGTUDOMANYI EGYETEM, Department of Public Building Design, Faculty of Architecture Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Levente Last name of representative: SZABÓ Gender: Male Nationality: Hungary If relevant, please select your other nationality: Hungary Function: Partner Project manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: MUEGYETEM RAKPART 3 Town: Budapest Postal code: 1111 Country: Hungary Direct Tel:+36 20 324 2953 E-mail:szabo.l@kozep.bme.hu
Name of the organisation(s): DEBRECENI EGYETEM, Department of Architecture Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Tamas Last name of representative: Szentirmai Gender: Male Nationality: Hungary If relevant, please select your other nationality: Hungary Function: Partner Project Manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: EGYETEM TER 1 Town: Debrecen Postal code: 4032 Country: Hungary Direct Tel:+36 20 364 3770 E-mail:szentirmai@eng.unideb.hu
Name of the organisation(s): UNIVERSITATEA DE ARCHITECTURA SI URBANISM ION MINCU DIN BUCURESTI Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Irina Last name of representative: Tulbure Gender: Female Nationality: Romania If relevant, please select your other nationality: Romania Function: Romania Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Strada Academiei 18-20 Town: Bucuresti Postal code: 10014 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 746 020 323 E-mail:irinatulbure@yahoo.com
Name of the organisation(s): UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Cristi Last name of representative: Pop Gender: Male Nationality: Romania If relevant, please select your other nationality: Romania Function: Partner Project Manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU 1 Town: Cluj Napoca Postal code: 400084 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 765 507 803 E-mail:cristi.pop86@gmail.com
Name of the organisation(s): SOFIISKI UNIVERSITET SVETI KLIMENT OHRIDSKI Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Kaloyan Last name of representative: TSVETKOV Gender: Male Nationality: Bulgaria If relevant, please select your other nationality: Bulgaria Function: Partner Project Manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: BUL TZAR OSVOBODITEL 15 Town: Sofia Postal code: 1000 Country: Bulgaria Direct Tel:+359 88 565 4885 E-mail:tsvetkov.kaloian@gmail.com
Triplex Confinium is a strategic partnership between 7 academic entities acting within the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology and geography, in and around the DKMT Euroregion. The partnership was imagined in 2019 as a means to tackle the gaps and mismatches between existing curriculums, while addressing our common regional Baukultur through a series of common lectures and teaching modules. These were tested during two on-site summer schools throughout 2021 and 2022. The main focus of these activities was targeted at border communities, small towns and villages placed in peripheric and transitional conditions, with precarious access to the knowledge networks as well as to the economic resources needed for a careful evaluation and protection of their valuable heritage components. Partners used the expertise of their tutors, students and extended professional networks to address specific spatial problems, thus encouraging local communities to actively engage in complex recognition processes of endangered sites and buildings. Through on site participatory action research, small scale artistic experiments, and various data collection and validation methodologies, partners tested the adherence of such communities to certain spatial and cultural values. Based on this experience, partners designed the brief of an international architecture competition targeted at students and young professionals, aiming to further enhance the field of debate this time around concrete design ideas. The competition was also used as a critique of current procurement procedures. A multilayered strategic site, superimposing various planes of interpretation was used to connect the various local regional and transnational actors, communities, academics. The competition methodology, with its the complex brief supplemented by the various teaching modules and experiments, was collected in two digital publications to be further used and enhanced on similar sites with the region.
Baukultur
Participatory Action Research
Architecture Competition
Speaking with communities
Small scale recognition
The initiative addresses this by zooming in and out at the various scales of the territory and actor networks (Latour), in search of the Baukultur manifestations that are a direct result of the ingenious and creative ways through which the various local communities, have historically tackled the scarcity of local resources. In the case of the chosen test area, clay, as elemental material, and brick, as ubiquitous building block, have been identified as being the main historical drivers of the local industrial ecosystems and, though it, of the general cultural and societal development of the area. For over a century the wealth and wellbeing of the two border towns selected for this research, Jimbolia (RO) and Kikinda (SRB), was a linked their brick making tradition. As their history greatly differs (Jimbolia lost all physical traces of this industrial heritage while Kikinda transformed it through careful repurposing into cultural spaces) a comparative stance was used throughout the action research. Emphasizing these sites as well as their collective history and many personal stories, either through artistic small scale interventions or through the application of advanced digital technologies, our objectives were to engage the locals towards a colective recognition of these values while also addressing their own resilience in the face of such historic changes. Historically, brick making has encouraged a very specific Baukultur, within which local craftsmen have produced objects of astonishing cultural value. This knowledge is however lost not only to locals but the many architects within the region. By imaging new strategies for using these former industrial sites and the ceramic materials they produced, we reconnected the various actors, human (communities, students, tutors) and non-human (institutions, procedures, technologies, places and artifacts), capable of sustaining a cultural renaissance and within it a greater sense of place for all.
The aesthetic experience of our initiative is the result of the various intersection points between the above mentioned actors. The program was first and foremost designed to bring together tutors and students from the three countries of the Euroregion, and engage them in a methodology based on cooperation and peer to peer learning. Secondly this learning process was achieved, in spite of the pandemic, through on site experiences, with the participation of local actors. Knowledge and mutual actor contamination were thus gained through real, un-mediated, immersive exchanges during the four weeks of summer schools. Employing various methodologies based on each partners specific strength, tutors, students and locals rediscovered the cultural, functional, and economic significance of brick though small scale artistic interventions using recycled bricks, photogrammetry and digital data collection of specific clay artifacts, digital design and robotic fabrication, manual manipulation, modeling and burning of clay tiles. These experiences were documented and used as the foundation for the project Atlas, a tool describing objective and subjective interpretations of the various research topics. These built the backbone of the Think Brick! International Competition Brief, a call that expanded the scope of the project towards outside followers and learners. The competition results were further used as means to debate with local actors the notion of quality in architectural planning for public spaces. The competition was thus imagined as a critique of the lackluster ongoing, EU funded, project tendered by the local authorities for the strategic site -the anthropic lakes formed in the former clay quarries. The competition, with its varied submissions, introduced the notion of opposing scenarios in terms of architectural expression, various functional solutions, smart material use, beauty, sustainability and cultural relevance in relation to the underlying historical narrative.
One of our main objectives was to reveal the benefits of strategic briefing, and the potential impact of participation and public consultation in the procurement procedures and overall aesthetic quality of the final designs. Public consultation is a procedure still in its infancy in Eastern Europe, that is often implemented as a mere simulacra stage of the general project design procedures. This is helped by the blasé attitude of the general public that has little experience with such procedures and a general distrust towards public authorities ability to engage in honest horizontal decision making processes.
Triplex Confinium sought to tackle this status quo by offering an alternative. In this regard project activities were designed not only for the benefit of learners but with the end goal of affecting local actors perceptions of what consultation around multilayered planning strategies can achieve in reaching the best design solution. Our multilayered approach, combining epistemic knowledge from the fields of social studies, politics, arts, economy, geography, anthropology, urban studies, architecture, engineering, scaled the exploration process, needed for the project brief, from the lowest common denominator; brick, to ever larger units; strategic site, town, region, euroregion and even continent. In doing this, the involved local actors could not only grasp the complexity of design process but could also better understand their own position, biases and gaps within the subject matter. With its two summer schools and exhibition events the two affected communities in Jimbolia and Kikinda were encouraged to collaborate and learn from each others experience in dealing with their common Baukultur.
Two communities were directly involved during the implementation of the two Learning Teaching Training activities and multiplier/debate events: Jimbolia (Ro) and Kikinda (SRB).
In Jimbolia local actors were engaged in the data collection process through face to face interviews. These were mainly conducted in the marginal Futok neighborhood, a former workers colony, built next to the Bohn brick factory. Furthermore, local actors and regular citizens were invited to all presentations and lectures held over a period of two weeks the the local Culture House. During the final presentation, 50 local stakeholders debated, and gave feedback on the final design solutions. This was replicated in Kikinda, where a similar event was organized during the main exhibition in the Terra Atelier. Based on this successful experience, Jimbolia has been selected by ADR Vest (Regional Development Agency) as a pilot town for a KDK heritage preservation strategy.
We expect that in the legacy phase of our project, we will continue to use its current methodology to target other similar communities along the borders of the three countries. This will ensure that academic expertise and presence as well as the benefits of architecture competitions in enhancing local Baukuktur, are spread out, throughout the territory, reaching where they are most needed. This has been described in our model curriculum output, within which the methodologies for learning, teaching, training place local communities not only on the receiving end of the learning and design outputs but throughout the entire design process.
Local cultural institutions were actively involved in the production of these events as well as that of the outputs: The Jimbolia House of Culture, The Sever Bocu Press Museum, The Terra Museum in Kikinda. Relevant administrators and policy makers from Jimbolia, Kikinda, Zrenjanin, Novi Sad, Timișoara, took part in the multipliers and dissemination events.
In Jimbolia, all activities were hosted by the Local Culture House. For a community of only 11.000 citizens Jimbolia is famous for its seven micro museums. Of all, The Press Museum is unique in its scope and size, collecting almost two centuries of local press published in Hungarian, German, Serbian and Romanian. The expertise of these museum managers was used in the design of our Competition Brief, as the strategic site has its own museum quality, capturing the only remnants of the former brick making facilities.
In Kikinda all activities were organized in the famous Terra Atelier and its museum. The Atelier is a repurposed former 19th century tile factory. Within its compound tutors and students could not only understand how such a facility functioned but also work, for two weeks, along side ceramic artists, using their spaces and dedicated kilns. Terra Atelier was also the setting of the final project exhibition.
The project also targeted corporate partners: such as the largest brick manufacturer in Europe Wienerberger, who joined our initiative and sponsored the jury works and the main competition prizes. The competition reached all the architecture schools in the four countries.
The project managed to involve The Regional Development Agency of the Vest Region in Romania (ADR), in its debates around the role of competitions for regional development. The Agency is responsible for the selection and implementation of EU funding programs.
Important cultural centers such as The Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, and the National Peasants Museum in Bucharest hosted our exhibitions and public debates.
35 academics were involved in the implementation of the project activities. They were placed in internationally mixed teams that allowed them to collaborate, observe and transfer knowledge and skills. This action was highly relevant as each national team has its own specific mission and area of epistemic knowledge. The Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning in Timisoara, as host and lead partner, introduced the history of the place, and developed modules dedicated to the evolution of urban planning. It also handled the photogrammetry workshop. The Ion Mincu Architecture University in Bucharest produced the Theory and History modules, used their Participatory Action Research vast past experience, and handled the production of the final exhibition. The Debrecen Architecture Department brought their specific artistic methodology and produced various site recognition interventions in Jimbolia and Kikinda. Budapest's Faculty of Architecture (BME) showcased their imense experience in dealing with the archeology of cultural landscapes. The Faculty of Architecture in Novi Sad brought their unique expertise in employing advanced digital tools, for both design as well as fabrication. These were used to reinterpret brick and clay though a modern technological framework. The members of the sociology dep in UBB (Cluj Napoca) are the foremost researches and specialists, within Romania, in data analytics and visualization. They provided the social and economic framing, while also conducting the interviews and consultations. SUSKO Sofia handled G.I.S. applications and introduced concepts coming from the field of Urban Geography. Tutors from all partner schools were involved in common training sessions, workshops, and in the production of three teaching modules and a common curriculum for an international Master program in Architecture. This allowed them to share knowledge and skills and to implement new methodologies within their own regular academic activities.
The innovative aspect can be observed in its mosaic structure of the resulting curriculum supporting the coopetition. The curriculum collects, from each partner school, the most relevant methodologies of research and design related to our subject matter. Our methodology greatly differs from previous student targeted competitions, as almost in all instances such competitions are briefed outside of the academic format. This is a purely speculative method that we wished to avoid by imbedding the research attached to problem finding and the subsequent briefing into the core the teaching and learning outcomes. This offers ample time for all parties involved to fully absorb the issues at hand (In our case through two on site summer schools) as well as the multitude of working hypotheses and final results. The resulted curriculum is steered towards learning components that offer not only skills and competence in project briefing, but foster pro-active attitudes and initiative towards the protection and enrichment of our common BAUKULTUR. Firstly, it aims to encourage architects to become active critical thinkers capable of addressing spatial situations that are less likely to receive such effective and complex procurement procedures. Secondly it aims to develop the local competition culture that is currently in its infancy in all of the three partner countries. This is an important area of the profession that, in the advanced economies of the EU, offers ample opportunities for young architects to access commissions as well as for local administrations to receive carefully planned and filtered designs. Thirdly it creates traceable results and research findings (such as the Jimbolia Atlas) that can be further used to foster knowledge and situational awareness outside of the competition itself. To conclude, it affects the attitudes and drive of all active stakeholders: specialists, architects, local actors, administrators.
The project's potential to grow lies in its methodology combining a MSC curriculum with an international competition targeted at students of architecture as well as young professionals under the age of 30. In this sense it can contribute greatly to the competition culture that the professional associations in each of the three countries are trying to grow. Placed at the core of the proposed curriculum, the competition transforms all learners' results, including here the initial research and findings, into effective tools that communities can use for their future planning of critical sites. This encourages further civic engagement around important topics, and impacts the decision making process of administrators. The latter can bid for funding based on a well researched project that has already passed initial consultation stages through its various proposed solutions. This creates a pathway for direct transfer of knowledge and expertise from the academic field towards the areas that need it the most, communities and administrations that are in the periphery of advanced centers for research and learning.
The project results : the curriculum, the teaching modules and and the digital publication showcasing the methodology are all freely available online for all to use. This repository of knowledge can be further used by the partners as well as by similar communities, bidding for their own competition.
The TC project acknowledged this horizontal dimension, and involved local actors in the design of the competition and Atlas. The project's results have been designed to be easily accessible for all interested parties. The methodology can thus be studied by other actors willing to adopt TC in their specific context. We expect that in the legacy phase TC methodologies and the competition will be targeted at other similar situations/ communities, thus creating a network of knowledge and examples of good practice.
The geographic area of interest during the implementation of TC was the historic Banat or DKMT Euroregion. The Banat is a historic region split between three countries, crisscrossed by borders and border crossings that in last century have switched centrality for periphery. This peripheric condition was tackled in all its aspects, social, economic, cultural, political. Two towns placed in this condition were targeted, Jimbolia (RO) and Kikinda (SRB). Partners identified a common topic, that of the cultural heritage created around the brick making industrial ecosystems of the two towns.
The implemented teaching modules and training activities are based on the Davos 8 Criteria for a High Quality Baukultur, and compared the two visible conditions of this heritage: one almost entirely lost (Jimbolia) and one carefully repurposed through cultural activities (Kikinda). The modules collect, in an integrated format, the expertise of each partner school impacting the main areas of action that were considered critical for the achievement of superior design strategies. These are: problem finding through immersive exploration, and theoretical validation, hypothesis formulation, methodological research, participatory action research, design oriented thinking, project dissemination. The skills and knowledge attached to these caveats of the design process are placed within the Theory Module (7 subcomponents) the Exploration Module (5 subcomponents) and an Implementation module (6 subcomponents).
The teaching modules were tested on group of 24 students from all four countries during the two summer-shools. These on -site activities further provided partners with concrete results that were collected in the ATLAS supporting the Think Brick competition brief. The results of the competition were used to engage local communities in a debate concerning the 8 Criteria of Baukutur: Governance, Functionality, Environment, Economy, Diversity, Context, Sense of Place, Beauty.
Before Triplex Confinium, most partners met within the conferences of the BETA Euroregional architecture Biennial. It is there that they could see the scope of the tutors individual work and that of their schools, acknowledging that the various exposed methodologies could become complementary in bridging certain epistemic gaps existing between them. These gaps were visible in each schools adherence to local regional problems or predisposition towards global trends and pedagogic practices. Without trying to favor either of them, the imagined partnership tried to create a cohesive body of actions and outputs mixing the best of the two worlds.
Through the 33 months of implementation, project partners thus managed to map the strengths and weaknesses of their institutions in terms of research and teaching methodologies. Emphasis was placed on each of the partners strengths in delivering a unique approach to our main objectives and outputs. On a peer to peer basis, for the first time, tutors from the architecture schools in the Euroregion were able to absorb each other's strengths, learn new skills and build a common strategy for future mutual academic development. Partners chose to tackle the various gaps and mismatches existing between their areas of expertise by designing three integrated teaching modules and a mosaic curriculum that offers the competence and knowledge needed for the briefing and design of projects targeted at tertiary towns and localities situated in peripheric geographic conditions.
At this point the initiative has not only concrete results but measurable observable impact with its core target groups. Within its academic target group, through its proposed MSC curriculum, teaching modules and tutor/ student network, it has achieved greater cohesion between our school programs as well as between the general interest of our higher learning institutions towards the many topics of our common regional development. The methodology is flexible enough to allow each partner school to place it self at the intersection of our academic interests around these topics: a general lack of awareness of our common Baukultur, loss of local cultural identity resulting from the constant erosion of global flows/ trends, complex problems arising from the chaotic and speculative superimposition between antropic landscapes (urban and rural) and natural ones, and the future of strategic planning and public procurement of projects related to economically less performative communities. The succes of our actions has led the Vest Regional Development Agency to further implement, in partnership with Triplex Confinium tutors, a pilot strategy for the preservation of local heritage sites and valuable ambiances. The pilot program can be easily further replicated around our region following the existing planning methodology.
Triplex Confinium has achieved brand status within our schools and even further. During the implementation period, we reached 7753 unique visitors on our page and about 400 students from outside the partnership during physical events.
Our project report, summited upon official completion of our partnership implementation period, received 90 points out of 100 from the independent evaluator employed by the National Agency. This granted our project a Good Practice badge on the European Project Results Platform, that encourages us to further explore our partnership using our sustainability scenarios.
The initiative embraces Complexity and Sustainability by looking at problems from various vantage points and through different epistemic lenses- multidisciplinar methodology. The on-site workshops and territorial explorations were designed as opportunities for finding various problems within and in relation to strategic site. The mosaic structure of the parallel workshops allowed participants to critically evaluate the results of these various research methodologies. The Think Brick! competition brief itself did not ask for a particular solution or architectural program but rather encouraged a critical approach of the site, leaving all options open for debate.
Within this complex methodology partners were able to manifest their adherence to various sustainability concepts: the sustainability and present dau relevance of the local building traditions a material, the importance of established natural ecosystems even within atrophic landscapes, the cultural resilience of identity narratives even when no real functional basis still exists for them.
Having all these in mind, partners encouraged learners and local actors to act accordingly, highlighting their real political agency within procedures often simulated if not skipped entirely. Both of the groups were able to understand the methodology and results of participatory action research. Students learned that there is a whole world of needs and desires outside of their narrative predisposition while local actors brushed with the idea of having not only a greater say in what is designed but in what to ask from planning in terms of quality.
This led both groups to envision a more sustainable future for the region and its Baukultur. Within it, local actors are aware of their cultural relevance and know how to demand value from planning strategies affecting their everyday spaces, while architects fully embrace their role of problem seekers and active initiators of processes and projects.
