UrbanEye.12 Bucharest | 2025

This edition is dedicated to Cătălina Ioniță (1981–2015) and Mihai Alexandru (1981–2015), as well as to all those who, ten years ago, were caught in the Colectiv Club fire.

Cătălina and Mihai were co-founders of UrbanEye – close colleagues, dear friends, and remarkable professionals. Their work was more than a vocation; it was a way of leaving a meaningful mark on the world, one that continues to inspire us today.

This year’s theme is emptiness, explored from multiple perspectives.

The emptiness left by the loss of loved ones. The inner void that quietly weighs on us, yet continues to shape the way we live.
And the voids within cities – those abandoned or suspended spaces between past and future – which can, in fact, be seen as fertile grounds for renewal and transformation.

The theme finds its roots in Cătălina Ioniță’s doctoral research, where she proposed that “understanding the concept of the void must go beyond a simplistic comparison to the idea of fullness.” For her, the void was not a mere absence, but something charged with meaning – a space of energy and potential, where transformation and continuity intertwine.

Perhaps this is the thought we can carry with us now, ten years later: that emptiness is not only loss, but also an invitation to create anew. That the memory of the past can coexist with the projection of a better future. That instead of turning away from emptiness, we might learn to integrate it – to let it guide us toward transformation.

Therefore, the activities of this edition unfold on several layers: a commemorative one, marking ten years since Colectiv, and a reflective one, about how we relate to the challenges of the present, both locally and globally.

This is an invitation to look around us with humanity, to remain aware, no matter how uncomfortable awareness may sometimes be. And to continue doing what we can.

Because, as Goodbye to Gravity sang that night in Colectiv, their words still echo as a reminder: we are not just numbers – we are alive. And as long as we do not give up, we still have the strength to build.

We’re not numbers, we’re free, we’re so alive
’Cause the day we give in is the day we die.
— “The Day We Die,” from the album Mantras of War (2015), Goodbye to Gravity