UNULAUNU (one to one ,-en) is Romina Grillo, Ciprian Rasoiu, Liviu Vasiu, Matei Vlasceanu and Tudor Vlasceanu. We first joined forces in 2010 driven by a simple wish of doing architecture and later we found enough commune and also conflictual points to convince that we should work together. Besides own projects we enriched our experience working in offices like: OMA / Rem Koolhaas-Rotterdam / Hong Kong, Christian Kerez- Zürich and Valerio Olgiati-Chur, living and collaborating with offices from Paris, Dubai, Zürich, Oslo, Berlin, Bruxelles and Stuttgart. Our first project was the competition and building of the national pavilion of Romania at the Biennale di Architettura of Venice 2010. The success at the prestigious exhibition and the fruitful collaboration gave us the opportunity to start an office

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ROMINA GRILLO was born in 1984 Como, Italia. She studied architecture at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio,Switzerland. Romina collaborated with the office Christian Kerez architektbüro - Zürich, worked as teaching assistant of Valerio Olgiati at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland and she worked at OMA / Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam. She is currently a teaching assistant at ETH Zurich in Christian Kerez’s studio.

CIPRIAN RASOIU was born in 1986 Brasov, Romania. He studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest and at the Stuttgart University. Ciprian worked for several architecture offices: Behnisch Architekten - Stuttgart, ReDesign Studio - Bucharest, OMA / Rem Koolhaas – Rotterdam and in 2010 he co-founded UNULAUNU. He currently lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.

LIVIU VASIU was born in 1982 in Romania and studied architecture at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland. He collaborated with offices around France and Switzerland and worked for two years in Valerio Olgiati’s office in Flims, Switzerland. He is currently living and working in Bucharest.

MATEI VLASCEANU was born in 1986 Brasov, Romania. He studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest and at KU Leuven. He gained experience through collaborations with various studios in Bucharest and recently, by working at OMA/Rem Koolhas – Hong Kong and Rotterdam. In 2010 UNULAUNU was founded, Matei being one of the founding partners. He currently lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. Romania.

TUDOR VLASCEANU was born in 1981 Brasov, Romania. He studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest and at TU Delft. Since 2007, he worked for several architecture offices: OMA/Rem Koolhaas - Rotterdam, Graft - Berlin, On Office - Oslo/Dubai, Spacegroup - Oslo. In 2010. He currently lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.

STATE OF MIND
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up in Delirious New York. There is an inherited conflict when thinking about what a museum means today. On one hand, there is a need to represent, to stand out, to address the masses, on the other hand, there is an intrinsic drive to create the perfect performing machine for exhibiting art. It is precisely in this zone of conflicting forces, where architecture transcends the physical form and it almost becomes alive. Consequently, there are two classes in decoding the project: one, macro-scale, the other, local. The symbiosis results in the architecture of the spaces and in shaping the building.


MACRO
The site is a very challenging one, for the obvious reasons: the proximity to the harbour, the presence of the park and waterfront, the will to orient the building towards the north and the city, the sheer size of the program that is to be fitted in the museum. An immediate reaction was that we must do the impossible and the museum should bring together the elements surrounding the site, rather than to break them apart, which would most likely be a consequence of only its presence there. From this perspective our project could be decoded as a mixt, prefabricated and in-situ concrete structure, that would create a platform, an artificial ground for the museum to grow on; an anatomy that would connect different levels: the street, the park, the waterfront, the museum entrance; one single organism that would mold to multiple site conditions to create an above and a below and that would separate and hierarchize different types of access to the museum; a topography made of public and private open air spaces. Apart from negotiating with the surrounding context, the platform is design to touch the ground with the smallest footprint possible, gaining this way a good connection north-south within our site and a shortcut crossing the museum from the park side to the waterfront. Protected by the concrete structure, the main lobby, opens towards the water, and in the same time connecting all four sides of the site.





LOCAL
Seen in a different light, the new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki is a series of spaces that accommodates art, all art: from super small, to extra large, from objects to performances. These wooden volumes, would refer to an optimal configuration dictated directly by the museum vision to exhibit art. Different in size, with movable partitioning walls, these machine like spaces, offer optimal light conditions and a wide range of possibilities in arranging different typologies of spaces according to the curators needs. There is a certain degree of autonomy, that we intentionally designed, so that, by not being just parts of a bigger thing, but almost “buildings” on their own, exhibitions can perform and function at their best in delivering an uncompromised space, flexible to accommodate any art show.

The project is located in the northern area of Porto – Castello da Maia and it deals with a former industrial compound and its possible reuse. The sprawl of the city of Porto is a less dense urban tissue composed mostly of residential areas, warehouses and university buildings. In this specific case, the density is representative. The sprawl itself is coreless - it is almost useless without its “host”. Looking closer, we believe in the potential of Castelo da Maia to create its own identity based on the University, the vicinity with the airport and the connection with Porto and Braga.
Evaluating the former industrial site we considered that even if there is no restriction in keeping or demolishing the buildings, its timely aura gives it a uniqueness character. Thus the existing layout made us take the decision to keep all the buildings and just add one other element that changes the character of the whole, together creating an organism. The element added to this system is in the same time a building and a piece of infrastructure. The new building spreads everywhere it is needed to connect and create links through the vast site.

10 projects are presented trough the use of imagery. The concept of the exhibition revolves around the idea of the beholder’s share and the fact that each individual formulates an interpretation of their own, from the work exhibited. Moreover, using the stereoscopic effect, the actual body of work takes its true form, only inside the viewers brain.

The physical representation of the projects its merely a vehicle that triggers the mind to go somewhere else. This exhibition could be seen as a metaphor for a way in which we see architecture to really be.

Building an embassy in this day and age, presents itself with a difficult task. It is a play of balance between meeting quite pragmatic and demanding issues (embassy historian Jane Loeffler) and setting a general tone for a future relationship and sharing experience among different countries, different cultures. On the one hand, safety, extreme privacy plays a crucial role for the functioning of such a building, and on the other hand, the architecture should communicate values of a culture and ideology, and thus to adopt a position towards the general public. You could say such a building thrives when it becomes a hub, a meeting place, always open and flexible, but makes its mark through time by functioning with a scientific precision within a controlled environment. The brutal clash of these opposing forces can only be solved through architecture that must transcend with elegance this level of understanding, thus truly mirroring the true values of a whole nation.












this project is the result of a collaboration between UNULAUNU, T3GMARK, Daniel Popescu and Rozina Dragomir

When embracing the challenge to imagine a stage for the “Elektra”opera, by Richard Strauss, at the UNE NUIT SANS OPERA festival, our interest tended to coagulate all the elements that are generating the mise en scene: performers, spectators, the space of the act, the space of spectators. Hence the challenge for us is to reinterpret the spatial values of the scenography in relation to its spectators.
We imagined this project, a fractal based corpus that defines spaces, a mathematical fragment of an infinite structure. It is one single gesture that holds relentlessly the scene with the act of playing and the spectator together. Experiencing the space of the act, the spectator has real emotions and clear understanding of the play. Changing the paradigm of spectatorship/audience into a participatory body in the opera, the intention is to define a common (here common represents a dilution of the border between spectator and opera not necessarily the perfect overlapping of the two) space for all the elements involved, leaving untouched the natural environment. Nature, in this case, becomes part of the opera.

As an answer to the competition topic, we’ve imagined a new public center for the village of Cenate Sopra, Italy. Due to severe surface limitation, our first action was to occupy as much as possible of the buildable area in order to cut out the biggest unnecessary surface. Together with the existing public space of the church and the street, the resulted space would gain the character of a generous and authentic piazza.



Given the complex topography of the site and the position of important focusing points like the school, piazza and the church, the new building is developed as a system of platforms that follows the existing terrain and organises the program in a strategic manner. As a result, the new building creates a continuous flowing space made of platforms and pillars. The structure takes advantage of the stair-like system and uses the step as a beam, resulting in an ingenious and simple structural system.
Due to its apparently deformed anatomy and its red colour given by the concrete’s pigmentation, the building gains the character of a huge resting animal between the heels of Cenate Sopra.

HUMANITAS ONE is a concept design for a new bookshop in the very heart of Bucharest. Our client, a prestigious publishing house in Romania, addressed us with the request to design a bookshop that would not only sell books, but rather become part of the everyday urban culture. To achieve this, we immediately knew that we had to create a feeling of community, a sense of belonging, a “thing” to gravitate around.

The location of the bookshop would be on a ground floor of an existing old house, that was being “restored” in a rather brutal manned, we considered. Only the old façade was kept and it was wrapping around another interior building that was not really providing us with any quality in teams of spaces. We immediately decided to leave apparent this incongruence and not cover it up in a fashionable way. The only thing that would merely attempt to resolve this clash would be the books that were placed on the perimeter of the whole space, leaving a big void in the centre.





Since spatially there was not much left to be done, after the “restoration”, we did ONE BIG OBJECT. A huge table suspended from the ceiling that would fill up the center of the room. The library would become a blown up living room with a big reading/cafe table. The whole structure would hang on the concrete structure and would connect all the people sitting around it, any slight touch on one side of the room would propagate on the other side of the room. By not dividing the room with walls or bookshelves, we obtained one big space. Other events could take place just by lifting up the big table that now would become a huge modern replica of a chandelier. The big object would become not only a visual iconic reference for the bookshop, but also that thing you love to sit around while spending time with friends and/or books, while drinking a café. The things that people would do in this bookshop would be seamlessly woven into one big story around one big table. This can ignite a community!





this project is the result of a collaboration between UNULAUNU and Exhibit Arhitectura.

Situated in the Western side of the old city of Brasov, today’s Gheorghe Dima Park, was always a unoccupied, free and “wild” piece of land. This, apparently undefined place had a very precise role, a tampon zone between two poles of the city: the romanian town and and the germanic fort. Its strategic position kept an active area despite the fact that the space is unmodified by urbanistic interventions, and it will stay mainly green
Future developing will define the whole four limits of an green “island”, a unique situation in Brasov.


Looking closely, the Gheorghe Dima park suffers from a strong formalism filled with over dimensioned path-ways with a monotonous character. Green spaces are enclosed with bushes and fences making them impossible to use.
Our proposal can be defined in a few points: re-dimensioning giving a clear hierarchy to all path-ways, reconsideration of the pavement of these alleys (not asphalt), giving continuity to the whole park (fragmented into playground, yard for the house of professors, and the area of the bust of Ciprian Porumbesu), defining the limit with Sirul Gheorghe Dima street and the parks that we find here, opening all green spaces.

Almost like a roman city, Deventer developed along two main axes. These axes connect the city with the surrounding and generate potential for the future and its transformation; one is natural, the river, the other is man-made, the A1 highway; one has an envi¬ronmental / leisure role, the other a commercial role; one represents heritage, the other represents prog¬ress. In the context of Deventer, the site proposed for transformation has a unique strategic location in relation with the two axes.
Therefore it can be easily observed that none of the existing hotspots has a relation with the waterfront. The city by the water represents a novelty here. The site is has again a one of a kind aspect, its position that is the most pushed forward to meet the water.
It can be noted that Deventer looks like a very pragmatic city. The public spaces, voids of the town, are not very well represented considering the growing scale of the city. They are designed carefully to almost a mini¬mum standard. All the public spaces are orientated inwards, self-referencing themselves. In this line of ideas, they could be placed anywhere. They don’t connect with other layers of the city.

Considering this aspects, the new development has to propose a much needed public space. Even more, it can take advantage of an outward orientated site that connects with all the four surrounding conditions.

The idea is to preserve and enhance the four different and unique conditions, atmo¬spheres. The Hoge silo becomes the cen¬tre of a system that organizes the development into four distinct quarters, all interconnected, but still retaining their own identity. The 2 axes gather all the generic pub¬lic program. They connect with the existing surrounding context. In depth of the four quarters, the specific of each area gradually becomes more and more present. The iconic presence of the Hoge silo is preserved. It becomes the origin of the Havenquadrat. The site has four different instances: a void space, a grand piano nobile for work, a secret passage court, and an industrial park ...
The Hoge silo represents a pilot project for the whole development. It is the only building that has an iconic presence and that contains a programmatic mix.
The corner of the public plaza lifts up to define the void space. The plaza is one object, a huge red concrete slab. Its sheer size gives a person a sense of belonging to a place.









this project is the result of a collaboration between UNULAUNU, Alexandru Tudose and Claudiu Forgaci

The project departs from the premises of exploring space and its discovery only by experience, grounded on a tension that architecture creates between: outside/inside. It is exactly this tension that this project focuses on. While on the outside a monolith marks at once, almost instantaneous the presence of something, of space, on the interior the same space is defined in the opposite way, it becomes something that never gives away its total presence. Architecture creates two different states of being: on the outside: static, exposed, on the inside: dynamic, a continuous discovery. The geometry of the object defines an inside space that becomes a continuous discovery. It can never be seen in its totality. For understanding space completely you would have to use the previous experience of the outside space, where the space was described in a much palpable manner.

The installation occupies and defines a Space. A series of elements, following one rule, defining in this way an ideal limit, an object perceived as a precise place, the “O” pavilion, positioned independently of the deigned path of the Dimitrie Ghica park in Sinaia, occupies a fragment of it, proposing a new way of public interaction. The new object is placed in the same axe as the entrance if the Casino. The dimension of the determined space it the same as the density pro capita of the city of Sinaia. The installation is a 1:1 representation of the human-space relation and it becomes a mean of self-reflection regarding the individual condition in the city and of the one of the community towards the public space. The public space is defined as the space of everybody and not as the space of nobody.

The ambition of the project is to provide a new spatial experience, complementary to the existing library, creating a whole complex. This should provide to future visitors not only a new way to access a variety of books, but also true architectural space, which together with logical organization of the library should create new sceneries in which the user could be fully engaged: interaction, discovery, research, insight, perspective, detachment, projection.The goal of the project for the Central University Library is to be more than an informational center, but to become a representative space for both collective and for the individual as well.