In 2018, I was involved for 7 months (June/December) as an architecture researcher at the “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galați in a complex, multidisciplinary team for the national support project “Strategy and Actions for Preparing National Participation in the DANUBIUS-RI Project” – DANS (2018), a management funding project from the Ministry of Research and Innovation, regarding the Feasibility Study and Technical Projects for the Romanian components of the DANUBIUS-RI project (Hub, Danube Delta Supersite, Data Center), coordinated by GeoEcoMar.
DANUBIUS-RI, The International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems, is one of the largest pan-European research projects with a Romanian component as of 2019 and refers to a CDI infrastructure for interdisciplinary studies of sea-river systems, designed to support “research that addresses conflicts between societal requirements, environmental changes, and environmental protection in river systems around the world.
The infrastructure is estimated to be operational by 2022, being included in the ESFRI 2016 Planning, with its headquarters in Murighiol, and selected as a flagship project for the European Strategy for the Danube. At the European Union level, the preparation phase of the project was funded through Horizon 2020 (grant no. 739562/2016).
My personal contribution, within the team of architects, focused on the architectural interfaces of the built components (Data Center) through the proposal to ecosystematize these interfaces (ecological interfaces), as a direct application of doctoral research. DANUBIUS is still in a design phase at the time of thesis completion.
It is important to note that although this type of CDI infrastructure is not directly linked to the field of architecture, architecture and design of architectural elements cannot fail to be part of research infrastructure and, through adapted language choices, can offer theoretical and practical support, as well as a competitive advantage.
