From a garden gazebo to a garden bench Part II (Alina Apostu)

After two days of work in the Masca warehouse, participants in the Recycling Workshop led by architect Gabi Albu traded in their drills, hammers, and work gloves for pencils, sketchbooks, and SketchUp, a 3D design and drafting program. Days spent working on the design of garden furniture installations are spent in the theater library. Music coming from a bluetooth speaker partially drowns out trackpad clicks; in between songs, you can hear pencils clutching the textured paper of sketchbooks.

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Everyone has already come up with an idea for what they’d like to build, toying with the design somewhere between the inventory of recycled materials available in the warehouse and the needs of the theater and garden. The quest to create an eco-friendly theater in turn requires creativity, a kind of creativity that is both down to earth and head in the clouds at the same time, to truly allow for a reimagining of the space through existing materials and means.  

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Drawing, feedback from Gabi, brief discussions, drawing, feedback from Gabi, a joke, an eye cast over the sketches of the others, a short cigarette break, drawing… that’s how the first versions of the installations appear. Just in time for a visit from Catinca Drăgănescu, the theater’s director. Each set designer presents their design and it’s among the first moments when a new life visibly springs visibly out of the sets in the warehouse.

Briana describes her furniture-installation design – in addition to the practicables, she also included one of the huge warehouse cars as a lighting fixture. (In the video you also quickly see Jardel, Masca’s theater buddy, wandering around idly, looking for cooler spots in the building. I’ll tell you about him another time.))

Pieces of wood, pieces of metal, and the inevitable dust, tangible elements of the recycling process, are now transformed by the imagination and skills of the set designers. Imagination and skills that meet, among other things, an old collective fantasy of the theater team, in the form of a climbing rose pergola.

But from sketch to final installation, the process is not strictly linear. After Catinca’s visit and going through the imaginary of the future installations, the team returns to the tangible – how many practicables do we have? What are the dimensions of the pieces? Where do we install? What does the space look like? Do we have room? So, despite the heat that feels like it’s sticking your skin to the asphalt, we go outside to see and measure the garden space again.  

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Everyone checked out their desired location in the garden, measured their space and checked the dimensions of their plant-furniture. Back to sketches now.

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This is already the third day of the workshop, a Wednesday. On Friday they will make one last visit to the warehouse to select their materials and put them away; from sketchbooks and design programs they will switch back to work gloves. But now, the day continues in the theater library as set designers revisit their designs…. music coming from a bluetooth speaker partially covers the clicks of trackpads; between songs, you can hear crayons clutching the textured paper of sketchbooks…

See you soon,

Alina