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crystal palace

one week at the national museum of the romanian peasant
*
curated by cryptic.k and sava.șom
2022



a cartesian forest, 
pressing down and crowding in. 
dense crowns. 
shadowed places. 
wooden chairs. 
baskets of apples.
 a long, narrow, constrained house, 
compressed and crushed. 
a continuum, always too small.
a square courtyard, unbroken, relentless. 
a room.
 another room. 
yet another room. 
rooms weaving into one another. rooms in enfilade. overlapping rooms.  rooms inside larger rooms. a house choked with time. hidden passages. obscure spaces. indecipherable links. an ambiguous reading. 
a swamp.
a hill arched toward the city. a slow, heavy flow. a dense square. turmoil. a marketplace. stalls. fences. paths. houses. a dog. a man descending unnoticed. a narrow, stretched staircase. his house. a narrow, stretched staircase. a boundless hall. terrifying, dark, tenebrous. water. endless. a cistern. mist. thin columns. thick columns. gathering and dispersing. mud clinging to backs in the dense square. a marketplace. fences. paths. houses. a dog.
the mavrogheni domain. 
an anonymous, immeasurable field. 
an abandoned, stripped hall. 
bizarre figures gather and lean against it. 
a brushing of shoulders. 
a disturbing mass gathering. unfathomable matter.
pressure.
a wide plain.
the city. 
an enclosure.
a path running along a thick wall.
a door. 
crosses. 
stillness. 
souls of the no longer living. 
all gathered together.

the national museum of the romanian peasant stands today on the imprint of the former mavrogheni domain, first documented graphically in purcel’s plan. this is the earliest recorded outline of the site — an almost rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 117 by 172 meters, now impossible to trace. the mavrogheni church, located outside the enclosure, remains the only landmark still in its original position.
the dense archive held by  the national museum of the romanian peasant , documenting the estate’s historical evolution, served as the launchpad for this workshop. confronted with the weight of this material, we sought to work with the tools of an architect, rather than those of a historian. our aim was not to exhaustively capture every aspect of the site's transformation. rather, we were interested in projects that would dare to say everything — or even, deliberately, the opposite.
the workshop proposed a sharp, penetrating approach, like an arrow that, by design, leaves something behind in order to illuminate something else — more precisely, to spotlight the specific potentialities the site offered at different moments in its evolution, and to exaggerate these nuances to the point of absurdity.
this method kept history somewhere in the background — hiding it, or perhaps protecting it. we sought to construct a counterfactual history. we explored the timeline by magnifying the significance of moments when major historical events did not happen.
in other words, we worked with a version of reality that had been deformed — a temporal line diverging from the natural course of history. we searched for key moments when the site's heritage potential reached its peak, while fully aware that in the next phase, something would inevitably be lost, as new constructions often become mere representations of a fleeting spirit, tied only to their moment of emergence.
working in teams of four to six students, participants were equipped with two tools: a 1:200 scale site plan and an axonometric drawing. after one week, five distinct attempts to occupy the territory emerged. this text was written about a month after the workshop concluded.

the work unfolded in two stages:
in the first part, we traced the evolutionary path of the former estate. mapping was the principal tool. we catalogued all the projects that had been realized, noting gaps where no information survived. these were organized into an index, laying the groundwork for the project proposals.
in the second part, we moved to reimagine the museum, beginning from a single moment and building outward by observing a possible new direction. each team pursued a speculative interpretation, speaking less about history in the strict sense and more about latent possibilities — with the church and the perimeter of the old enclosure as the only anchors to reality.
workshop organized by
the national museum of the romanian peasant
the archive of image of the national museum of the romanian peasant
the order of architects of romania, bucharest branch

organized during the bucharest architecture annual

media partners zeppelin

theme of the workshop conceived by
cryptic.k and sava.șom

workshop coordinators
cryptic.k and sava.șom

hand drawings, text, video
cryptic.k

students
amina alchihabi
vera apostolescu
mara bejan
ruxandra chiriță
larissa danci
georgiana dumitrescu
andrei dobriță
andrei ivănuș
ionuț leahu
tolian manoli
adelina marin
ana-maria marțiș
ilinca mărăcine
patricia mihai
alexandra moise
andra necula
matei popescu
david rareș
tudor stănilă
ana truțulescu
horațiu zăpîrțan