The 2024 Beta Architecture Biennial, in Timișoara, Romania, marks the tenth anniversary of this influential event. Curated by Oana Stănescu, this year's biennial, titled "cover me softly," explores the nuanced relationship between originality and influence, challenging conventional notions of copying, imitation, and appropriation. In addition to the Beta Awards, aiming to highlight significant contributions to architecture from across Romania, Hungary, and Serbia, the main exhibition offers a distinctive interpretation of recurring themes of the architectural field.
Held in Timișoara's historic 18th-century Garrison Command in Liberty Square—the city's oldest building in its original form—the biennial utilizes the entire structure, from the ground floor to the attic. Previously used for smaller events, the Biennale fully occupies and rediscovers this layered space, transforming the building itself into an active participant in the exhibition.
The exhibition, adapted to the building's unique spaces, is neither prescriptive nor didactic. Instead of offering solutions, it fosters questions, discussions, and investigations. The exhibits showcase over 50 installations and 80 illustrations created by invited architects, artists, musicians, and interdisciplinary actors who evade easy classifications. The result does not strive to create a coherent whole, asking instead for each instance to relate, in its own way, to the word 'cover.' According to Oana Stănescu, the curatorial team found 5 cross-disciplinary interpretations of the term 'to cover': the literal meaning of offering shelter, the act of transforming the existing, the process of creating something new through repetition and adaptation, more common in the music and fashion industry, the cover as a mask offering protection, and the cover as a mimicking gesture.
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"You Can't Do Architecture Just with Architects": In Conversation with Oana StănescuThrough the active programming of the event, including workshops, lectures, and performances, curator Oana Stănescu gathers diverse perspectives, many from outside the field. Among them is Radu Jude, a celebrated Romanian film director and screenwriter. In a conversation with Stănescu, he declares "What I'm trying to do is to succeed in making films without being creative. And the only way I can do this is by thinking about the themes I touch on for a long time beforehand and gathering the materials I need. Said materials come in various ways: through research, through observation, and gathering all sorts of quotes or ideas from various places, collecting images, photographs, or paintings."
Jude's pursuit of success without overt creativity seems paradoxical in filmmaking (and architecture), but it underlines the challenge brought forth through the Biennale. It prompts architects to contemplate the often-hidden sources of inspiration, references, traditions, and the width of materials and influences that shape the architectural process. This perspective also challenges the notion of the architect as a solely original creator.
The concept resonates with the idea of vernacular, architecture without the architect. As a form of covering, vernacular architecture creates repeated and updated designs, driven not by the creativity of its creators, but by the scarcity or availability of resources, by functional needs, or by tradition. Without relying on ingenuity or techno-positivism, it often offers a rational and unself-conscious version of architecture embedded within its context.
Expanding upon this theme, Atmos Lab's installation titled "Climatic Solutions" offers a contemporary reinterpretation of vernacular ideas. By comparing Wladimiro Acosta's "Helios System" for Buenos Aires' subtropical climate with Lacaton & Vassal's winter gardens for France's oceanic climate, it shows how a climate-responsive design echoes traditional solutions, repeated, adapted, and improved to create interior comfort.
The premise of the cover is to start with what is already there. - Oana Stănescu
Throughout the Garrison Command building, a selection of artifacts and domestic furniture borrowed from the Museum of the Banat Villages adds another layer of locality to the setting of the exhibition. Mirroring this, Karamuk Kuo adds a communal bed in the entryway of the building. Covered with traditional blankets, it creates an intimate space suddenly exposed to the public eye, transforming pillow talks into public discourse and blurring the lines between performer and audience, private and public, intimate vulnerability, and open discussion.
The problem of originality might seem like a cornerstone of architectural production, a field in constant search of innovation, new forms, new expressions. However, this idea can be traced back to the 1800s, when the focus of the art world shifted the emphasis from the value of the creation to that of the creator. The time also coincides with the initiation of the first framework for author's rights, introduced in 1886 by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. It resulted in increasing pressure to push for innovation, originality, and a central leading figure, "the manufacturing of an architectural guru" as Denise Scott Brown puts it in her essay "Room at the top?". Here, she discusses the profession's difficulty in accepting and recognizing co-authorship, hers and Robert Venturi's, among many others.
Where does one draw a line between inspiration, tradition, derivative or copy? When is the canvas really blank? - Oana Stănescu
This idea of originality was repeatedly challenged, contracted, and expanded by the invited creators, often showcasing different versions of originality as something emerging from the context, not from the vision of a singular figure. As globalization brings both standardization and a search for identity, the idea of originality becomes ever more fluid. In present times, is the search for innovation and novelty still the right direction, or should more efforts be put toward addressing climate challenges, social inequalities, or the housing market?
In another installation, SO-IL provoked themselves and other respected practitioners to find ways to 'cover' Lina Bo Bardi's Casa de Vidro in São Paolo, Brazil. Given identical materials, participants created visual representations of the work, resulting in designs that explore various aspects of the building's design, from its relationship to the landscape (SO-IL) to its ground plane (Angela Pang), and its adaptability to different climates (Misiūna/McCarthy).
Further underlining this recurring concern of originality, nida ekenel's 'A New Lecture: Architecture's Century-Long Quest of Novelty' presents a stream of over 100 lecture snippets of practicing architects exalting the idea of newness and originality. Striving to market their designs, the architects emphasize repeatedly the word "new," either as an adjective, noun, or filler, but the effect is semantic satiety, causing the word to lose its meaning gradually.
New Affiliates' installation explores how imitation and reinterpretation can serve as tools for deepening understanding of a subject. It explores the unconventional architecture of Bruce Goff, a Frank Lloyd Wright student, by creating drawings that deconstruct three of his eclectic houses. In a different medium, it reveals their blend of industrial materials, consumer goods, and personal inspirations, translating and covering the architect's intuitive design process. In another interpretation of the topic, Friedemann Heckel recreates in real life in the Garrison's attic a scene painted by himself years prior representing a photograph of the table prepared to welcome his grandparents' wedding party of 1949, the empty scene infusing a sense of expectation and uncertainty echoing in cover after cover, the atmosphere of postwar Germany.
Oana Stănescu's "cover me softly" at the 2024 Beta Architecture Biennial doesn't present architecture conventionally. It imitates, recreates, and freely explores, offering not definitive answers but a compelling investigation of architectural creation as a continuous process of covering, uncovering, and reinterpreting. Avoiding the celebration of a singular achievement, or the offering of definite answers, it becomes a compelling exploration of architectural creation as a continuous process of covering, uncovering, and reinterpreting.
