Ioana Trușcă

Ioana Trușcă: “An apartment good to be lived in should make room for changes”.

She is an architect and cartoon and graphic illustrator. She has graduated from “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, and currently she is on the doctoral program of the same university. She has created nine cartoons for #DespreLocuire exhibition. There are nine scenarios of how a two-room apartment can be used, nine ways of space interaction.

Vlad Odobescu: What sort of experience do you propose to visitors?

Ioana Trușcă: A collection of housing scenarios for a two-room apartment. More precisely, P770 and the A/B unit.

Starting from the Ideilagram research – Housing in-between product and process, I made up nine cartoon-based short stories, each made up around a user type. I’ve found the key-stages from an individual’s life, and then I’ve watched him or her within the very same 50 sq. m in each of such stances.
The student, the freelancer, the young couple, the teenager and his family, the old couple or the lonely old man have different approaches to space. So, I’ve selected slices from the ‘life in the apartment’ of each of them, and displayed them on two or three pages drawn in ink.

How many things and how many people can two rooms accommodate?
What happens when in one pantry you have to stuff pickle jars from two sets of concerned parents from the country?
How is it like to wake up in the bedroom and work in the dining room?
How easy is it to spy from the stairwell of your block?

Each story is about an obsession, an inconspicuous one sometimes, and more than often as large as the living room; yet, it is typical of the user’s age and habits.

The lives of these neighborhood super-heroes take place somewhere within an area calculated in square meters.

How did you come up with this solution?

Now I feel extremely comfortable in-between architecture and graphic illustration; so, when I was supposed to speak about life in an apartment building, the cartoon was my best and most natural choice. What’s more, I think it’s an intervention that exquisitely complements the technical side of the exhibition: besides statistics, materials and areas, it’s a relaxing (and hopefully amusing) way to show slices from the user-apartment relationship.

What do you think a good place for living in should look like?

A place where you are comfy, a place that provides intimacy, yet gives you a chance to interact with the exterior space. Because we never fail to redefine our wishes and needs (as I’ve learned while drawing the 9 stories!), I think that an apartment good to be lived in should make room for changes.

Obviously, there are minimum necessary areas and ways to organize space according to diverse efficiency levels. Yet, I think people do have unimaginable adjustment capacities, and besides space configuration according to user’s needs, dwelling involves the adjustment of one’s needs. It happens that more than once physical limitations grip your imagination and you’re about to end up with unexpected solutions. Thus, we come to shortcuts, ‘patchwork’ and all sorts of spur-of-the-moment solutions that, although aren’t part of the formal architectural intervention, add extra functionality.

Photo credits: Dragoș Mălăescu