Romanian ice skating rink design is Fall 2010 ArchitectsJURY winner

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — The pirouette, ice skating’s most iconic movement, served as the inspiration for the winning design in the Fall 2010 ArchitectsJURY competition. Designed by Mihai Macavei, an architecture student at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, the ice skating rink incorporates the pirouette into the dynamics of the building.

Designed using GRAPHISOFT ArchiCAD, the end product is a visual depiction of the deconstruction of the pirouette, represented in three layers: the structural pillars reflect the various positions of the skaters on the ice during specific strokes; the trajectory describes the movements; the volume enclosing the rink is a combination of the first two ideas, and is the volume of the movement.

“ArchiCAD is the most user-friendly software I’ve used, given its ability to serve as a central hub for all the other software I use,” Macavei said. “I’ve been focusing more on the design process as a method of communication, and ArchiCAD is an excellent partner for that,” he continued.

About Mihai Macavei
“I grew up in Targu Lapus, a small town in the district of Maramures, Romania. My main interest initially was art, and sculpture, specifically. I studied traditional and modern wood sculpting. When I graduated from high school, I realized that architecture was a way to build functional sculptures. So, I enrolled in the architecture school at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, which was a turning point in my life. In sculpture, I knew how to express myself with the tools I had learned. My challenge was to learn how to express myself in the architectural environment as well. A combination of modeling and design tools, including ArchiCAD, give me the freedom I need to express myself.”

The ArchitectsJURY competition is aimed at finding the best architectural student work, as judged by visitors to www.ArchitectsJURY.com, the student architecture community. For more images of the winning project, go to https://www.architectsjury.com/pages/competition/2010-fall-semester/winners. To learn about the 2011 Spring ArchitectsJURY competition, go to https://www.architectsjury.com/pages/competition/2011-spring-semester/.