Formal – Informal exhibition design, Bucharest

For the design of the Most Beautiful Books in Romania exhibition, an annual book design event, a set of furniture for temporary book display was needed. Cardboard was chosen as appropriate construction material for its tactile relationship with books, but also with regard to the limited budget and short time frame for design and production.

The necessity for easy transportation and assemblage was addressed through the construction of a series of packs containing three types of modular pieces – a table, a stool and a panel – that compose through repetition a proper space of contact between viewers and books. Folding is used as basic method for changing each element’s configuration from packed to being used.

Following the instances of book display in the city, once obsolete as exhibition furnishings, the cardboard pieces are taken out in the street, making the transition from design showcase to informal second hand book sales by redistributing part of the exhibition resources to support the practices of the local antiquarians near University Square.

Even if the informal book sellers have had a long history in this central square, the places where they are allowed to continue their activity are periodically changed when they begin to proliferate. They survive by finding unclaimed spaces around the square where they continue to be tolerated. Presently they remain scattered in the area, ready to pack and run when police is coming.

Phase: Completed : Exhibition design

Client: Asociația pentru performanță și cultură

Location:National Library / University Square, Bucharest

Curator: Anca Verona Mihuleț

Photos: Cristian Nistor (p1,3,4) Catalina Filip (p2) cu amabilitatea Institutului Francez courtesy of Institut Francais de Roumanie