Wandering Threads – conference and pop-up exhibition
📍 Zion Synagogue, Oradea
📅 7–9 April

Oradea stands at the crossroads of trade routes and cultural exchange—a city shaped by layers of transformation, where history is woven into its architecture, materials, and creative practices.

WANDERING THREADS invites you to explore these connections through an experimental, collaborative event bringing together designers, architects, academics, and the wider public. Together, we’ll uncover how the city’s built and textile heritage continues to shape the way we live today—and how it can inspire more sustainable, thoughtful futures.

🔍 What to expect:
* Engaging lectures from international and local experts exploring the relationship between architecture and textiles
* A large-scale collaborative installation mapping Oradea through colored threads and place-markers inside the synagogue
* An exhibition showcasing fragments of Oradea’s industrial and visual heritage, including textiles and leather goods from historic local factories

💡 Why join?
This project creates space for dialogue across disciplines and communities—connecting past and present, local and international perspectives. It’s an opportunity to reflect on how design influences everyday life, urban development, and environmental sustainability.

📋Programme

🗓️7th April, Tuesday
⏰from 5 PM

✏️Opening Session – Greeting Words Alexandru Chira & Anthony Gall

✏️Transition Design Lived experience in the ideation of preferable futures – Britta Kalkreuter & Emma Gall – Heriot-Watt University

✏️Living Fabric: Community Cultural Infrastructure – Anthony Gall – OE YBL, Budapest

🗓️8th April, Wednesday
Future Forward Session

⏰from 3 PM

✏️Plants, Raw Materials in Contemporary Object Design – Carla Szabo-Munteanu – Universitatea Oradea

✏️Temporal Fluctuations and Urban Attitudes Former Industrial Sites in Oradea (online) – Ioana Francesca Hanga-Fărcaș – Universitatea Oradea

✏️Lüster Ceramics – The revival of traditional crafts in a practical context – Cecília Hausmann

✏️Between Theory and Practice: The FIX Makerspace Story – Tibor Pósa

🗓️9th April, Thursday
⏰from 3 PM
Living Textiles Session

✏️Fabrications 01. Textile as Material and as Metaphor – Paul Stirton

✏️Fabrications 02. Textile as Material and as Metaphor – Juliet Kinchin

✏️Walls as Textiles Textile as a “building material” and the neolog synagogue of Oradea as a Semperian edifice – Deodáth Zuh – OE YBL / Oradea Heritage

✏️(Un)building Architecture Reweaving the Fabric of Place – Anett Mizsei – OE YBL

✏️Cosmopolitan Localism Sense of place and cultural identity in connected communities – Britta Kalkreuter – Heriot-Watt University

⏰from 6 PM
✏️Opening of the pop-up exhibition – Curatorial words by Anthony Gall and Deodáth Zuh

✅Entrance is free. The conference’s working language is 🇬🇧English.

The event is organized by Oradea Heritage in partnership with Óbuda University, Ybl Miklos Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Budapest, Heriot Watt University – Edinburgh, Scotland, and the University of Oradea.

This program is supported by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary (NKA) under the grant “Multidisciplinary Workshop in Oradea” (project code: 503108/01498).

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