Drawing Theater

Installed in Piața Unirii, Iași, for Romanian Creative Week 2024, the Drawing Theatre is an open-air stage of stained plywood and loose mineral gravel, inviting people to draw, rest, perform in the center of the city. A platform, a tribune, and a steep belvedere create places to sit, observe, or take the stage, shaping an active public space open to both play and performances. The ephemeral drawings on gravel relate to local architectural patterns and textures, it redefines the public square as a site of encounter, creativity, and collective authorship.

Piața Unirii, a monumental square in the center of the city lacked spaces for participation and play. We reimagined it is as an earthly drawing board, an open theatre where anyone could compose, erase, and redraw ephemeral bas-reliefs upon a loose mineral surface. Within the stage, one may become a geo-grapher, literally drawing on the surface of the earth; a curator, completing, erasing others’ traces; or rest feeling loose soil beneath one’s feet. Inspired by Iași’s patterns and reliefs — from the Monastery of the Three Hierarchs to Soviet motifs, to Porumbescu’s architecture and the ploughed fields surrounding the city — the project unfolds as a living ground for gestures, rituals, and collective drawings that evolve through time and use. It proposes a new type of public realm, not neutral, but a terrain for action and imagination, where citizens are geographers, gardeners, drawers, dancers and performers, shaping a collective artwork made by traces that appear, fade, and are drawn anew.

It is built with stained marine plywood and loose, light-coloured mineral gravel, chosen for their tactility, affordability, and durability. The use of loose materials allowed us to work at the scale of the square within a limited budget, shaping a ground that could be drawn, erased, and re-formed — a bright and whimsical terrain emerging from the pavement of Piața Unirii. A platform, a tribune, a steep mirador, and a zig-zag cabinet for drawing tools were dry-assembled, allowing the structure to be dismantled and reinstalled. Different timber essences form handcrafted tools - chimeras of local woods - are hybrids of ploughs, rakes, compasses, and oversized pencils, inviting multiple ways of engaging with the gravel. Fabricated with local workshops, the pavilion can be sanded and restored with minimal maintenance. After the festival, it was donated to Casa Bună Association, serving children from vulnerable communities, where its elements await reinstallation as a future playground.