THE REQUIEM
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Design Director: Raya Ani
Company Name: RAW-NYC Architects
Category: Architecture
Year: 2016
On October 30th, 2015, a terrible tragedy happened in Bucharest, Romania where a fire at the Club “Colectiv” where 400 people gathered killed 64 people and injured many more. Six teaching architects from UAUIM (the University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”) died where one of them was a member of the group that was performing that night, launching their newest album, one song being called: “The Day We Die…” A tree standing in the courtyard of the old Pionierul factory where the Club was located was a witness to the night of 30th of October 2015.
Our proposal highlights this tree as a symbol of the powerful stories of the Colectiv tragedy to keep the victims' stories alive and stories sang into an architectural requiem where the spaces are about the feelings transferred into matter. The tree was moved from the Pionierul square to a river front location where the void left in the square was used to symbolize the enormous loss of lives of the club fire. At the same time, moving the tree to the river represented continuity as the water flows continuously through the river across Bucharest. The tree communicates to us and the next generations the need to keep the stories alive and it brings awareness of the fragility of human lives.
