The opening of the 6th Year Exhibition, part of the X5 exhibition within FAST, turns Iași’s public space into a meeting point between architectural education and the city itself. Set as an outdoor display near Iași Town Hall, the exhibition presents diploma projects by 6th-year students from Romania’s five schools of architecture, inviting the general public and festival guests to step into a conversation that is usually kept behind studio doors. In just 30 minutes, the opening frames these works not only as final-year outcomes, but as public propositions.
What makes this exhibition distinctive is the way it bridges FAST’s collective memory with a clear forward gaze. Visitors are invited to rediscover moments, themes, and collaborations from previous FAST editions in Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca, not as nostalgia, but as evidence of a growing inter-school network, a platform where ideas travel, evolve, and gain relevance across cities. Against this backdrop, the diploma projects become more than individual achievements, they read as the newest chapter in an ongoing conversation about what architecture can, and should, do next.
The projects on display reveal a generation trained to think across scales and responsibilities. From questions of urban transformation and reuse, to environmental performance, social inclusion, and cultural continuity, they reflect the realities young architects are preparing to face. Presented outdoors, these concerns become legible to a broader audience. Drawings, models, diagrams, and visual narratives operate as conversation starters, encouraging passersby to ask, disagree, and imagine alternatives, alongside the authors and their peers.
By moving graduation work into the public realm, the exhibition reduces the distance between academic research and everyday urban life. It offers professionals a glimpse into emerging methods and priorities, while giving non-specialist visitors a rare opportunity to see how architectural thinking is built, tested, and argued.
Ultimately, the opening is not just a showcase, it is a civic invitation. It links the legacy of FAST to the architects who will carry it forward, and it positions the city of Iași as an active participant in that transition, a place where trust, curiosity, and professional futures can be negotiated in public.
Photo credit: Chifan Yolanda, Tiberiu Ifrim
