
Klara Veer
- How would you introduce yourself to strangers?
An extremely curious and active being, which has still to learn to how to stand still and purr.
- What made you choose architecture as a profession?
Ah, the moment of the deadline! I decided at the end of high school, when my colleague Attila Kim, a freshman, was telling me about the creative atmosphere at the design classes in the first years and about those few real professors from the faculty of architecture in Cluj. You can still find them there and it might be a chance they will change your life. I now realise, that in 1997 I did not choose my profession, of which I honestly knew nothing about, but the school in which I was going to spend a big part of my life. I when I hit the walls in my 4th year, I continued my studies in Finland with the help of a scholarship.
- How has architecture influenced you personal development?
I don’t even make a difference between the two anymore…
- How would you describe your alternative activity to people unfamiliar with it?
Sometimes, in spite of architecture and other times, inspired by it, my alternative activity has remained and will remain Playfulness. It often happens for me to use my imagination and to make weird mental connections and then I sit down and create a jewel out of an imbus set. Or I recycle the pullover that shrunk in the wash by tailoring a present for my nephew who drew me a bird… I conjure up a bag out of a folder. I think that all these are called Product Design.
- How has the transition from architecture to your alternative activity occurred?
It was precisely the other way around. From Playfulness to the alternative activity of being an architect I ended up by finding myself in the situation in which to choose a profession from which to live. Architecture was close at hand, it just gave me a study degree. The project LUtOPIA was born after more and more friends and then strangers started sending me their childhood drawings, or their children’s: they were too beautifull not to bring them to life. (www.lutopia.ro) Then I started to receive shrunken pullovers.
- How do the two activities influence each other?
I learned that it potentiates: the design of architecture, the design of jewellery or of a toy, they all are born from the pure empathy towards the one to whom it is destined. And I do not agree with those who assert that the quality must cost a lot, I think that we can make functional things even at reduced prices, we can learn to creatively reuse the existing resurses.
- To what degree are you present in each of the activities?
I generally prefer to work with those who have the will to make good things and ask for my help for this: no project is too small for me. Fortunately, my activities balance out each other: after a week spent on construction sites, what could be more comforting than to embroider the eyes of a plush dragon?
www.LUtOPIA.ro
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