Department:

Basics of Architectural Design

Course Leader:

conf.dr.arh. Melania Dulămea

Teaching Staff:

https://www.uauim.ro/departamente/bp/grupe/

Teaching language:

Romanian

Learning outcomes:

Strengthen the progressive understanding of the city through the project, exploring the co-presence of several rules of urban planning.
Training the capacity to build a public architectural program and to understand the urban articulations of a public building.
Developing the sensitivity for the built heritage and the professional skills of intervention on and in the vicinity of some existing buildings with architectural value.
Developing the capacity for formal creation and architectural composition, exploring hierarchical relationships between elements with weights and variable role within the ensemble.
Understanding the sustainable dimension of the design and use of built spaces.

Content:

Theme 2 (III) / Places of the city II. Public neighbourhood library.
The project site is the result of at two-stage urban process.
First of all, we are talking about the progressive construction of the periphery of interwar Bucharest, with private plotting and parcelling by the Communal Affordable Housing Society. Houses and, in some places, small multi-family buildings, form a relatively unitary urban fabric, bordered by several urban axes. However, in all this fabric there remains a relatively exceptional territory, in terms of occupancy, function and size: towards Calea Dudești it is taken up by the ‘Ciocanul’ school of crafts, while the heart of the island remains unbuilt and was used as a stadium starting with 1921, first by the large Jewish community in the neighbourhood, and then as a public sports base. Your site occupies part of this former stadium’s footprint.
Then, there is the Communist Civic Centre project, which erases, in the 1980s, a good part of the city’s central area, especially the Jewish Quarter. It leads to the construction of Unirii Boulevard, which connects the People’s House to Alba Iulia Square and of Decebal and Burebista boulevards, and the curtains of apartment buildings that end up completely masking the fragments of urban fabric left after the demolition. In fact, there are still residents, on both sides of the Unirii Boulevard, who remember the neighbourhood before the significant transformations of the 1980s and the trauma of Communist demolitions.
Thus, the project behind the Burebista Boulevard makes you face a typical Bucharest situation: the unresolved collision of two historical and social fabrics that are difficult to reconcile is unfortunately found along most of the city’s major axes and requires architectural and urban solutions to match the problems it raises. At the same time, the site proposed for study is special, even unique, due to its size and proportions, and things look promising for a program just like the library one, which shows up in such a place both as a cultural, and a social presence, an opportunity for encounters and subtle re-weaving of the city.
This will be a public neighbourhood library, therefore a local equipment, which will serve an area with a radius of approx. 1 km (accessible by walking) and approx. 25,000 inhabitants. This means that it will host at least 50,000 volumes (printed material). Added to these are media and digital materials.
This local endowment will be part of an extensive network in the city, therefore its visitors are to be considered almost exclusively the people in the neighbourhood. The library will also be a centre where residents can gather, and it will also provide study and work spaces. This program would be open at least 70 h/week and would be easily accessible to anyone.
A library is designed with a minimum lifespan of 20 years, in which time the book fund and the necessary spaces grow incessantly. In your proposal, an expansion/reorganization scenario can be considered, without this being a mandatory requirement.
The areas listed below are minimal.

Teaching Method:

- Theoretical lectures (with illustrations) delivered by professors for all the year students or within the design shops;
-Continual guidance through the study activity;
- Correction of each student’s work or with the whole group;
- Site visits, case analysis, worksheets, project sketches, scale models.

Assessment:

Project workbook, individual overview of the project, the design studio jury will give a grade.

Bibliography:

București, România, sud-estul Europei
Bonciocat, Șerban, Hanna Derer, Corina Popa, „București demolat”, Fundația Ines, 2013
Maurice Cerasi, La Città del Levante. Civiltà urbana e architettura sotto gli Ottomani nei secoli XVIII-XIX, Jaca Books, Milano,1986
Giuseppe Cina, „București, de la sat la metropolă”, Editura Capitel, București, 2010
Hanna Derer, Building Urbanity in Bucharest, siTA, Vol. 3 / 2015, “De Urbanitate”. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces - https://sita.uauim.ro/f/sita/art/04_Derer.pdf
Ștefan Ghenciulescu, „Orașul transparent. Limite și locuire în București”, Editura Universitară Ion Mincu, Zeppelin, 2010
Constantin C. Giurescu, „Istoria Bucureștilor”, Editura Vremea, 2009
Grigore Ionescu, „Istoria arhitecturii româneți. Din cele mai vechi timpuri până la 1900”, Ed. Capitel
Ulysse de Marsillac, Ghidul călătorului la București în „Bucureștiul în veacul al XIX-lea”, editat de către Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Editura Meridiane, 1999
Lascu, Nicolae, „Legislație și dezvoltare urbană. București 1831 – 1952”, doctorat, UAUIM, 1997
Lascu, Nicolae, „Bulevardele bucureștene până la primul război mondial”, Simetria, București, 2011
Andrei Pănoiu, „Evoluția orașului București”, Editura Fundației Arhitext, București, 2011
Andrei Pippidi, „Case și oameni din București” (Vol. I+II), Editura Humanitas, București, 2012
Ioana Tudora, „La curte. Grădina, cartier și peisaj urban în București”, Editura Curtea Veche
Ana Maria Zahariade, „Arhitectura in proiectul comunist. Romania 1944-1989”, Editura Simetria, București, 2011

Lucrări esențiale
• Am menționat aici data primei ediții. Vă recomandăm, desigur, o ediție cât mai nouă
Kenneth Frampton, „Modern Architecture: A Critical History”, Thames and Hudson World of Art, 1980-Wiliam JR Curtis, „Modern Architecture Since 1900”, Phaidon, 1982-
Leonardo Benevolo, „The History of the City”, MIT Press, 1971-