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Radu Tîrcă and Ștefania Hîrleață are students at University of Architecture and Urbanism 'Ion Mincu', Bucharest. At present, they lead their theoretical research on the subject of thermal towns and diploma projects in Govora Baths under the guidance of Stefan Simion, Irina Tulbure and Ilinca Paun Constantinescu. As students, they won second prize and best student project in a BeeBreeders international architecture competition - Mango Vynil Hub, third prize in a Zeppelin national competition - Prototip pentru comunitate, as well as other mentions in other competitions.
Is there an essential space to the School?
Michael Meredith & Hilary Sample, MOS
The window is the most important space of a school. Windows, not the OS, but the thin spaces between inside and outside, between ourselves and others. In-stead of occupying the window, we look through it - as a frame, a transparency, an opaque solid, a surface, a reflection. The window is a construction that de-pends on your point of view. It can be a door, a wall, a screen, or almost nothing at all, fading from focus. They come in different shapes and tints. They are fixed or operable. Personally, we like large square windows, neither portrait nor land-scape in orientation, and big enough to walk through, to escape wherever you are. While in school, we need to be reminded of the world, of the things outside our body of knowledge, outside of our education, outside of us. Windows pro-vide a picture, a desire, a reminder of doubt, the unknown or unknowable, and the possibilities of something else.
In 2008, we were licensed and became a legal entity, but we had already had an office and made some buildings. At some point, we drifted towarsds MOS - an acronym of our names and reflection of a shared desire to be horizontal and fuzzy, as opposed to tall and shiny. We began around an oversized table, a surface for collecting, gathering and thoughts. We are now located in New York, we have grown a little, but remain around a large table, working tofheter on each project through playful experimentation and serious researcg. We have won some awards. We have written some books. We have built some buildings. We are currently making more. Our webside indexes that work: housing; schools; houses; cultural institutions; retail; exhibition design; instalations; furniture; objects; books; writing; software experiments; and videos.
