ilinca bucur — spatial and graphic design

Set Design · Installation

CineVan

Set Design · Installation

CineVan

“CINEVAN is a mobile cinema and film production platform. Conceived as a hybrid of exhibition space, workshop, archive, and traveling cinema, the project uses a converted van equipped with projection, sound, and screening infrastructure to bring film practice directly into public space. Commissioned by Lothringer 13 Halle, CINEVAN deliberately operates beyond institutional walls. Screenings, discussions, and workshops unfold in streets, squares, and transitional urban sites, making artistic processes visible and accessible to diverse audiences. Cinema is understood not as a closed event, but as an open, situated practice of encounter and negotiation.”
— patrikthomas.de

My contribution to this project involved developing the scenography through sketches, renderings and collages. I also helped the conversion itself by reconstructing the van's interior with insulation, refurbished wooden panels and flooring and aluminium frames to support the technical equipment and cinema screen.

Oct 2025 — Jan 2026 // Photo credits: Patrik Thomas; Lothringer13; personal archive

Set Design · Commercial

Adidas — The Family we create

Set Design · Film @ HFF München

Adidas — The Family You Create

This project is a 90-second speculative advertising spot for Adidas, developed by director Alex Kurt within a student team at the University of Television and Film Munich. As a set designer, my role was to create the scenography for several key settings within the film, working alongside my team.

This included transforming the bedroom set, staging the car sequence and constructing the final rave environment. We adapted the bedroom to resemble a realistic domestic interior — the room of a 16-year- old who feels unsafe at home and needs a place to relax and feel safe — thus supporting the social-realist tone of the opening scenes. The car was a transitional space that enabled the switch between locations; here, we focused on small yet powerful details, such as the interior accessories.

The final scene was built as an abstract yet stylised rave setting. Artificial grass was laid out to define the space and facilitate the visual transition from everyday reality to the film’s collective, celebratory setting. The set was designed to be minimal and adaptable, ensuring that performers, camera movement and lighting remained central.

Throughout the project, our aim was to create clear yet emotional environments that support narrative progression without distracting from the characters.

Dec 2025 [Photo credits: Kai Sachs; personal archive]

Set Design · Film

The Naked Rider

Set Design · Film @ HFF München

The Naked Rider

“The Naked Rider” is a 90-second advertising film for Levi’s, developed by directors Alex Kurt, Moritz Hoffmann and Johannes Beck within an advertising seminar at the Faculty for Television and Film Munich.

This was my third collaboration with film students, and it offered an opportunity to design an environment that felt cinematic yet ordinary, simple. My team and I built the set inside an empty industrial space at Kies- und Quetschwerk Oberbrunn, Bavaria.

Using discarded furniture, old signs, and leftover materials, we recreated the look of a dusty American convenience store. The main construction task was the small kiosk, built from wood salvaged from a garden hut. Every object on set was chosen to feel old and used, so the space carried a sense of history. The final set combined storytelling and handywork, blending architecture, craftmanship and cinematography. This short film won the Gold Award (Publikumsjury) at Spotlight Festival 2026 in the category TV & KINO.

Jun 2025 // Photo credits: Timo Paul Rißmann; movie stills

Set Design · Sci-Fi

Thermiq

Set Design · Film @ HFF München

Thermiq

“Thermiq” is a short science-fiction film about an astronaut living alone in a spaceship, trying to maintain contact with Earth as his mental state slowly starts to deteriorate and his surroundings fall apart.

Our team worked within the existing 360-degree set at the Bavaria Filmstadt, the Stowaway. We reconfigured the space to create a small sleeping pod and workstation, using simple materials and practical lighting to make it feel both functional and lived-in. The pod was built from scratch, the main challenge being blending it seamlessly with the intricate Stowaway. Each surface and object was chosen to suggest a life defined by routine and memory.

Feb 2025 // Photo credits: movie stills - WIP

Set Design · Drama

Jakob will keinen Schwanz lutschen

Set Design · Film @ HFF München

Jakob will keinen Schwanz lutschen

“Jakob will keinen Schwanz lutschen”, dir. Paul Schumacher, tells the story of a young couple whose relationship starts to fall apart in small, ordinary moments. While Jakob questions his sexuality, Anna is questioning her love for Jakob.

The film is bold, explicit and yet personal and heartfelt and it oscillates between reality and dream. The set design needed to feel like an honest reflection of that. Together with my colleagues, I worked on redesigning and decorating the apartment where most of the story takes place. We focused on showcasing the traces of daily life and the personalities of our main characters. The central prop was the “beating heart” that is being ripped out of Jakob’s chest, built with a simple mechanism, inserted into a real pig’s heart. Creating this prop was a test of creativity as well as dexterity.

Sep 2024 // Photo credits: movie stills

Set Design · Theatre

Zeit ohne Gefühle

Video Set Design · Theatre

Zeit ohne Gefühle

Video Set Design Assistant for Patrik Thomas, at Münchner Kammerspiele.
"Zeit ohne Gefüle" - Text by Lena Gorelik, directed by Christine Umpfenbach.

More info: https://www.muenchner-kammerspiele.de/en/programm/42851-zeit-ohne-gefuhle

Sep — Oct 2025 // Photo credits: Julian Baumann

Set Design · Miniature

Fakt / Fake

Set Design · Miniature

Fakt / Fake

Fakt/Fake was a collaborative photographic and film project developed by TUM architecture students and HFF camera students. It investigates architectural illusion as a metaphor for ideological construction, using the former Führerbau in Munich (nowadays the Hochschule für Musik und Theater) as a point of reference.

Following a site visit, we discovered that monumental surfaces intended to appear massive and permanent, such as those with a marble-like texture, are in fact painted concrete layers masking the building’s true structure. This observation shaped the project’s conceptual framework, linking architectural deception to the National Socialist regime’s reliance on staged imagery and false claims of authority. Based on this concept, we designed and constructed a physical model in 1:20 scale that abstracted and exaggerated these deceptive architectural features. Rather than being a representational replica, the model was a spatial device that could be read as both architecture and stage set. The short film was shot inside the model, which gradually revealed through cinematic framing and camera movement the artificiality of the space.

Through the combination of architectural modelling and film techniques, we explored how architecture can serve as a tool of illusion and how cinematic space can be employed to dismantle narratives of power and permanence.

Apr 2024 — Jan 2025 // Photo credits: Nils Fröhling; personal archive

Graphic Design

Posters & Identities

Graphic Design

Posters & Visual Identities

Over the past years I have worked as a freelance graphic designer on a range of smaller projects, creating visual identities, posters, and publicity materials. These have included graphic concepts for artist residencies, exhibition announcements, and film posters.

In my work I try to stay playful and open to unexpected solutions. Rather than strictly following traditional grid systems, many of my posters develop more like images or compositions that can stand on their own. I often think of them less as layouts and more as framed pictures, where visual elements, color, and typography interact freely. Graphic design has become a parallel practice to my architectural and scenographic work. It allows me to experiment with composition and visual storytelling on a different scale, while still exploring many of the same questions about atmosphere, perception, and communication.

2022 — 2026

practicing at the intersection between spatial design and visual arts -
stretching across disciplines.

My approach to graphic and set design is influenced by my background in architecture and grounded in an understanding of space as a narrative medium. I approach design and scenography with an architectural mindset, considering structure, scale, materiality and spatial sequences as tools to support the storytelling.

Each project begins with close attention to the script or the brief and concept development in dialogue with the client. Rather than treating sets as decoration, I consider how environments can frame action, guide movement and influence the emotional impact of scenes. The initial design stages involve creating sketches, diagrams, finding references, and sometimes drawing technical plans to translate narrative requirements into spaces.

Drawing has been a constant part of my life since childhood and it gradually developed into a central tool and a primary means of expression. Freehand drawing evolved into architectural sketching, and later into a structured method of thinking and communicating ideas once I began studying architecture. My architectural training provides a framework for working precisely and pragmatically within these interdisciplinary contexts.

Born

March 1998
Bucharest, RO

Based in

Munich and Berlin, DE
since 2017 / 2026

Education

M.A. Architecture
TU Munich, 2025

Languages

Romanian · German (C1) · English (C1)

Software

Adobe Illustrator
Photoshop
InDesign
Rhinoceros 3D
Archicad

Craft

Woodworking
Model making
Photography
Hand & digital sketching

Disciplines

Set Design
Graphic Design
Web Design
Photo / Video

Selected Work Experience

November 2025 – present

Workshop Assistant

Schreinerei Marlene Märkl, Munich

October 2025 – present

Self-Employed Professional

Photo / Video, Graphic & Web Design

2023 – July 2025

Graphic Designer & Tutor

Chair of Architectural Informatics, TU Munich

2022 – 2023

Working Student – Graphic Designer

Spaciv GmbH (start-up), Munich

2018 – September 2025

Working Student - workshop assistant

Technical Centre Design Factory, TUM

Artistic Works

March 2026 - April 2026

Set Design and Model building of "Silent Odd"

commissioned by M+M Art
part of "the Mantiss trilogy"

October 2025 - January 2026

Design and execution of "CineVan"

collab. with Patrik Thomas for Lothringer 13
part of Antifascism: now! exhibition

September - October 2025

Video Set Design Assistant

"Zeit ohne Gefühle" at the Münchner
Kammerspiele, dir. Christine Umpfenbach

September 2024 - present

Set Design (for HFF München)

• "Adidas Family", Adidas Spec Spot - shot Dec. 2025
• "Mission BRD" - shot Oct. 2025
• "The long Goodbye" (working title) - shot Sep. 2025
• "The Naked Rider" Levi's Spec Spot - shot Jun. 2025
• "Thermiq" (working title) - shot Feb. 2025
• "Jakob will keinen Schwanz lutschen" - shot Sep. 2024

Let's work together.