TERRRA

Located in Brezoi, a former industrial town in Romania’s mountains, TERRRA Hub fosters regional renewal through agroecology, cultural tourism, and sustainable forestry. It promotes traditional ecological knowledge via research, professional training, and hands-on practice. Spanning 6,000 m², the hub features workshops, meeting spaces, accommodation, and experimental eco-design land. Its 200 m² cultural annex, inspired by local barns and built collaboratively from local materials, reinterprets traditional craftsmanship—blending innovation, community participation, and ecological responsibility.

Brezoi faces significant landscape degradation due to its industrial past and the decline of locally rooted stewardship. Traditional skills and self-build knowledge have diminished, while the town architecture increasingly relies on external specialists, conventional methods, and imported industrial materials—raising CO₂ emissions and aesthetic concerns. TERRRA Hub addresses these issues through both its programme and architecture. As a centre for popular ecology, it promotes landscape preservation and the revival of traditional ecological and construction practices, passing them on to younger professionals. The building embodies this approach, integrating sensitively into its surroundings with a green roof and wooden terraces and using locally sourced materials and traditional techniques executed by local craftsmen. Its design celebrates and reinterprets vernacular methods, creating new aesthetic expressions that merge ecological function, cultural continuity and contemporary design.

The building integrates stone and wood for carbon sequestration, using traditional methods and locally sourced materials. On-site eco-prototypes—dry toilets, water management, and circular waste systems—enable composting, straw reuse, and dry sanitation. Solar-protective shutters ensure thermal comfort while preserving a barn-like aesthetic. Water strategies respond to climate challenges through torrent diversion, ponds, and mini-canals for rain and greywater collection, maintaining 75% site permeability. Local craftsmen and intergenerational workshops foster community participation and skill transmission. A green roof of native plants blends into the terrain, and the layout reflects traditional settlement patterns. Guided by the “reduce, reuse, recycle” R-principles, TERRRA minimizes costs through local resources, embeds maintenance within its training program, and stands as a living model of ecological stewardship and sustainable architecture.