The URANUS NOW project is about the living history and the community spirit, about the sometimes invisible connections between radically different ages. December 22, 1989 marked not only the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, but also the end of his tabula rasa project for Romanian cities. Thirty years on, the collective memory of these destructions is fading away, while the aggression against the cities goes on, even if in the opposite paradigm—that of ultraliberal development. Thus, URANUS NOW combines three critical themes: an excursion into architectural-urban and personal history, a critique of current developments, and a contribution to a more balanced and responsible urban development of Romanian cities, one that would also include history and take it further. 

We focused on the Uranus – Izvor area, as the most representative for Ceausescu's "great project": here, a piece of historic city was almost completely erased (from buildings and streets, to topography) and replaced with an assembly of enormous buildings, forbidden areas and wastelands. Along with the specific research, two essential questions were asked: How do you present an annihilated world? How do you connect the inhabitants' memories and stories of the old streets and houses with the current space? Our keyword was co-presence: a merger of today’s reality with the former one. We rebuilt a world and made it invade the present space.