From Fort to Filament, NO: A Temporary Canopy Activating a Stranded WWII Site
Successful Competition Entry for Faerderbiennalen, Built / 2026
Radu Remus Macovei in collaboration with Edward Wang
Photo Credits: Ioana Marinescu
The intervention is situated within the abandoned remains of the Vardaas fort, a WWII military structure, inserting a new spatial narrative into the ruin. What once operated as a device of exclusion and defense becomes, through this gesture, a site of collective presence; a decisive shift from the logic of militarized closure to one of shared experience. At the center of the proposal is a lightweight hoop, spanning roughly twelve meters, which encompasses the inner ring of the former fort. From a distance, it signals an opening: a mark of invitation laid atop a structure once defined by its opacity. Up close, it offers shelter, recasting the fort's concrete void as a place for gathering and performance. The hoop structures a disc composed of multiple layers of reclaimed fishing net, a material that is at once fragile and resilient, both providing canopy space underneath and a surface for lounging and watching the sky. Their accumulation produces a surface that is porous and luminous. By night, the canopy becomes a soft radiating plane, projecting the silhouettes of those beneath it; by day, it casts shifting, ephemeral shadows that animate the heavy concrete with unexpected delicacy.
The disc rests on a family of wooden supports—approximately ten in number—that ‘hook’ onto the existing concrete structure. These elements are intentionally slight, almost anthropomorphic in their disposition. They perch, lean, and settle against the ruin, reading at times like figures or glyphs temporarily inhabiting the site. In their quiet presence, they introduce a playful dimension to the austere geometry of the fort.
Together, the disc and its supports establish a flexible framework for performance. Beyond programmed events, the space is intended to function as a place of pause. It is an invitation for visitors to inhabit the shade of the canopy, to linger, and to experience the fort anew.