The story of building a bridge between architectural education and the labor market is, for me, an old one. In 1994, at the suggestion of my professor, Alexandru Stan, I took on the task of arranging the display windows of the Ion Mincu University of Architecture building facing the University Square with construction products. This was done to make the Finishing course more accessible to students: "In the number ... display window you'll find exactly the product/system we're discussing about now."
Later, with the emergence of the ConstructExpo fair, I expanded the collaboration with companies supplying construction materials and products. Many of these companies gave me their invitations to ConstructExpo—very expensive in the early years!—which I distributed to students. And the students came! I saw them leaving the fair with bags full of materials (some learned the lesson well and started coming with... suitcases). Then, Romexpo, the organizer of construction fairs, opened its doors to students: from our university and others... come, see, explore!
I used to ask the building product companies from the Romanian market "Don’t throw away catalogs and brochures when you print new ones with updated products; send them to me, so I can give them to the students. They need technical documentation as a starting point to build their technical libraries." For years, students received product catalogs as a complementary educational resource for the course of Architectural Detailing.
Around 2016-2017, the director of one of the companies (Glamour Floors) interpreted "catalogs" as not just booklets with images, details, and specifications but... sample catalogs. Would you like some? Wow! Of course! We’d love that! And on the scheduled day and time, he brought a van full of various samples—parquet, carpet, stone, PVC—to the university hall. I must confess, I hadn’t seen such excitement in a long time! Students were hugging or cherishing construction materials: "Ma’am! Look how beautiful this stone is!"
Between 2020 and 2022, we held online courses. In the fall of 2022, at the initiative of the President of Ion Mincu University - the legendary professor Mac Popescu - we celebrated 130 years of higher architectural education in Romania. As part of the festivities, together with Glamour Floors, we launched The Gift Cart. Conducted in three "sessions" with the participation of around 15 companies specializing in finishing products, the event became a vibrant link between students and the labour market. The subject I taught, seemingly dry and theoretical (without the key to unlocking the fascinating world of construction and finishing materials), became tangible and captivating.
You can find more information about the 2022 edition here.
We are reinventing The Gift Cart with the 2025 edition, aiming to support education in the field of construction through non-formal and informal means.
And we'll be back soon!
