BNA
National Biennial of Architecture 2025, 16th edition – “OTHERWISE”
ARCHITECTURE FILM
NATIONAL ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION 2025 ROMANIA
BIENALA NATIONALA DE ARHITECTURA 2025 ROMANIA
“AI = VR × t²”
ROOTS in FRAMES / Film Projection
AI = VR × t²
Architectural Intelligence = Vernacular Resilience × Time
The film projection, created for the ROOT exhibition presented at Art Safari, Dacia-Romania Palace, Bucharest (06.03–19.05.2025), with the support of the National Heritage Institute, is an experimental film dedicated to the unchanged image of the Romanian village. It depicts a world untouched by time, as perceived by Brâncuși and Ovidiu Maitec, as captured by their contemporary photographic explorers at the beginning of the 20th century, and as recaptured today by Alexandru Crișan, bringing it into the present.
The film explores the persistence of memory and the enduring beauty of rural life, presenting vernacular architecture and domestic universes as a source of artistic inspiration. Historical frames come from visual explorers of the Romanian village such as Kurt Hielscher, Alexandru Bădăuță, and Tache Papahagi, who documented the face of architecture and rural life at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
Today, Alexandru Crișan re-creates this archetypal archive (2000–2024), capturing unchanged scenes on black-and-white and digital film, highlighting light, shadow, and material textures, and offering a visual testimony of a world persistent in personal and collective memory.
The film marks 100 years since the birth of Ovidiu Maitec (2025) and 150 years since the birth of Brâncuși (2026), inviting viewers to contemplate the static beauty of the domestic universe as a starting point for modern and contemporary creation. Photographic fragments capture the dynamism of static forms in light, which Crișan transforms into an experimental visual flow—distortions, kaleidoscopic and dreamlike effects—evoking the permanence of memory and subtle contemplation of time.
Repeated sequences of pillars and porches evoke modernist compositions of diptych, triptych, or pentadiptic types, following the sequentiality and mnemonic structure of the image. The exhibition invites the public to rediscover the intimate beauty of the vernacular world, transformed into an archive of collective memory.
Symbolically, the soundtrack is composed by Bianca Maria Popa. The piece The Return, for flute, violin, cello, and piano, is inspired by a manuscript by Béla Bartók (1912), containing a song collected from the village of Murani, Timiș County. The work explores the concept of “return,” revisiting thematic and folkloric motifs, alternating meditative states with the reality of Bartók’s theme.
Photographic Selection / ROOTS Documentary Archive (COLLECTING ROOTS)
The visual basis relies on Alexandru Crișan’s archive (2004–2024), documenting the vernacular architecture of houses and homesteads in Gorj and Maramureș, in rural contexts and within reference museum environments: ASTRA Museum Complex – Dumbrava Sibiului (2017–2024) and the Museum of Folk Architecture in Gorj – Curtișoara (2004–2016). Historical image archive: Kurt Hielscher, RUMANIA, Leipzig, 1933; Tache Papahagi, IMAGES D’ETHNOGRAPHIE ROUMAINE, BANATOLTENIE, Tome Troisieme, Bucharest, 1934.
AI = VR × t² ROOTS an exhibition by the National Institute of Heritage (INP, Ministry of Culture) from March 6 to May 19, 2025 at ArtSafari 2025, Dacia-Romania Palace, Lipscani 18-20, Bucharest Artist: Alexandru Crișan Curators: Dr. Iulia Gorneanu, Dr. Ana Maria Crișan The exhibition starts from the contemplative process that precedes the act of creation. It builds a bridge of artistic origins, bringing together the unchanged frames of a world seemingly frozen in time, in the recent image archive that immortalizes eternal fragments of vernacular heritage (in the Filmic Projection AI = VR * t² / Architectural Intelligence = Vernacular Resilience x time). The film projection brings together photographic frames that celebrate the anonymous image of the traditional universe, as a source of inspiration for artistic creation, in a meditation on the unchanged world that also served as a source of inspiration for Constantin Brâncuși. Constantin Brâncuși’s photography experiments have a certain pioneering quality to them, toying with light, shadow and texture in order to transform a simple piece into a symbol of eternity. AI = VR * t² reinterprets this vision, inviting the viewer to contemplate the static beauty of the vernacular domestic as a starting point for modern and contemporary creation. Anticipating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the artist C. Brâncuși, which is to be celebrated in 2026, in this apriori, the artist calls on the image of the original elements in a sensitive reading key. The photographic fragments illustrate the dynamism of static forms in light, capturing this vibrato as a particular vibration of light and shadow on raw materials. In this sense, A. Crișan reinterprets traditional film techniques in the digital age, and amplifies this transformation of static images into a dynamic flow by applying experimental visual effects – distortions, kaleidoscopic and dreamlike effects, etc. – thus invoking a state of altered perception, and foreshadowing the lyricism of his artistic works through the sgraffito technique. The exhibition invites the general public, via ART SAFARI, to rediscover the intimate beauty of the vernacular world – a world that, through its iconic frames, becomes a veritable archive of personal and collective memory, revives the tradition of Gorj, the original epicenter of Brâncuși, and opens new ways of interpretation in contemporary art.
About Alexandru Crișan – Architect, Photographer (b. Bucharest, 1978). Alexandru Crișan is an explorer in the field of visual arts, working through abstract forms in contemporary art, techniques in oil and acrylic painting, fine art photography, and, more recently, multidisciplinary visual research through art and architecture. Crișan is a versatile artist, continuously seeking the perfect image and the discovery of deep meanings and interpretations, with recognition and collaborations in international art publications. As a Romanian architect and photographer, he is acknowledged and awarded, specializing in art and architectural photography, and is a promoter of national and international heritage. Crișan is an active specialist in the fields of visual arts, architecture, and academic education, serving as a lecturer at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture in Bucharest, and a researcher at the Culture Reserve Association. He advocates for non-formal education, exploration through visual media, and fosters dialogue between tradition and innovation.
National Biennial of Architecture – Romania, 2025
16th edition – “OTHERWISE”: