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The Sibiel Cultural Centre
Ecomuseum – Contemporary Art Gallery by Ovidiu Daneş DALA Cultural Foundation
Introduction
The project of the DALA Foundation started from the idea of restoring the dialogue between two cultures, rural and urban. The setting of the Sibiel village provides, through the dynamic of changes, interesting documenting research-experimenting material. The Sibiu outskirts, currently going through a transformation process that can be followed along several lines (image, human composition, and oral tradition), provide their journey of identity development up to present times.
Rearranged old boundaries, drawn anew on the basis of the recent law on residential colonisations, weave new centres of tension, new village hearths into the rural realm. One of the most easy to observe constants is the immediate alternation between well preserved areas of vernacular architecture, clearly defined in vicinity, with the current ambiguous insertions, oversized and with standard purposes. The demolition or abandonment of the area specific housing system is joined more or less symbolically by the disappearance of crafts, traditions, or by the transformation of the image of identity-giving monuments. The phenomenon is new to the Sibiu outskirts villages, and interventions in recent years are radical. The Sibiel Cultural Centre will emphasise the contemporary reality in a particular manner, by means of the location, the architecture project and the program. In the summer of 2006, the recently established DALA Foundation acquired a house registered in the local patrimony, in an attempt to mediate the conflict between the former owner and the Local Patrimony Department. After the takeover, dismantling and transportation to its new location (approximately 200 m from the original location), the house was prepared for restoration on a land property at the end of the village. Placing the Cultural Centre on a land separating the old Sibiel village from its more recent extension allows for the taking on of the double discourse of boundary. Physically, the proposed boundary is a river stone alleyway, a historical emphasis which will articulate the architecture project. Being the first of the village from the point of view of the traveller and the last seen from the village hearth, the alleyway separates the Centre in its two components, the Ecomuseum and the Contemporary Art Gallery, proposing a face to face dialogue between them. The Ecomuseum, seen as a future space for the local community to present its current daily life, will use as raw material the image of the local household; the typology of the latter is that of a Ushaped living area which makes maximum functional use of the land, where the house is always smaller than the auxiliary spaces – stables, barns, workshops. The Ecomuseum program will be organised around a long term exhibition of 6-9 months, during which one family from the village at the time will manage the living space, and the auxiliary spaces will host workshops; glasswork, ironwork, wood sculpting and cutting, pottery – all trades which survived until recently in the region. The cellar and attic will be used to store preserves made according to methods specific to the area of the Sibiu outskirts. An accommodation centre for 20 persons will be built on the same side of the alleyway and in the immediate vicinity of the Ecomuseum, following the same typology of the U-shaped living area. The basement of this space will serve as cooking and dining area. The materials used for the two buildings, the Ecomuseum and the accommodation centre, will come from demolished or abandoned houses and barns; wood pillars, large stones strapped with wrought iron, gates, river stone, tiles. On the other side of the alleyway, the Contemporary Art Gallery conceived as a container space will host a research centre and a multi-functional space for events hosted by the Sibiel Cultural Centre: exhibitions, workshops, training sessions, seminars, lectures. Both the multifunctional space and the accommodation centre will periodically be made available to companies interested in organising events: training sessions, seminars etc., thus ensuring the sustainability of the Sibiel Cultural Centre. The purpose of the Cultural Centre entails finding technical solutions with minimal impact on the environment, such as: heat pumps with shafts, a combined system with solar cells for hot household water, thermal insulation through processed sheep wool, wall covering out of clay mixed with sand, hemp and straw fibres.
Image 1. The Sibiel
Cultural Centre; Image 2, 3. Wood houses from Răşinari village and Gura
Raului; Image 4, 5, 6. Wood houses from Sibiel village, Fântânele
village and Arpaş village; Image 7. Old house moved to new location and
rebuilt; Image 8. Wood house from Fântânele village.
- Ecomuseum – old house moved to new location and rebuilt - Workshops of the ecomuseum - Multifunctional building with research offices - Accommodation rooms with dining room - Administrator’s house Project team: Ovidiu DANEŞ - art historian, project manager Şerban STURDZA - architect Klaus BIRTHLER - architect Luiza ZAMORA – art historian Ioana POPESCU - research director, Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest Laurenţiu TOMA - visual artist DALA Cultural Foundation The DALA cultural foundation was established in May 2006 in Romania and operates as an NGO. Objectives 1. Promoting and supporting projects in the area of visual arts, curatorial activities and cultural management; 2. Drafting and implementing alternative educational projects on various components of contemporary arts; 3. Drafting and supporting architecture projects with an effect on public spaces; 4. Supporting research programmes in the areas of stable and mobile heritage, of monument restoration and conservation projects, of research in the area of old Romanian art; 5. Book publishing.
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