Interstitial spaces and urban regeneration.

This project proposal consists in a revitalising intervention on an urban island of Bucharest’s Old City, by revealing and acknowledging a famous Gallery’s past, understanding today’s needs, in order to add value, educate, attract capital, improve quality of life by offering the premises for growth, in a functional, aesthetic and fluid space.

At present, the local occupation is predominantly institutional, with representations of commercial function, hosting banking institutions, pharmacies, antique shops, isolated administrative headquarters of some companies, in contrast to fast-food restaurants and small bakery businesses. The architectural background is characterized as an eclectic, modern and socialist overlay. In this context, the project proposal is shaped as an urban regeneration approach, aimed to revitalize the old Blanduzia Galleries by implanting a multifunction edifice, that will have the potential to attract an infusion of human, cultural and financial capital. The mixt complex will have accessible cultural and recreational spaces at ground floor, while hosting above commercial functions, offices, corporate headquarters and some housing and accommodation spaces. Applying the gentrification process, this area will prosper, meet social, cultural and financial needs and become for locals and tourists more than a transitional corridor between Bucharest University and the Old City Center, two major focal points. From an architectural and urbanistic point of view, the basic principle of the project is the interstitial structure. Starting from an urban island marked by a green past, with gardens, shops, cafes, brewery, theater, as well as a network of gangs, inner courtyards and passages, a reinterpretation of them is proposed, that will ensure a comfortable and inviting pedestrian traffic, and will also create a framework for socializing and recreation. By touching such a sensitive area of the capital, with a considerable density of monument buildings, where neighbor buildings have architectural and historic value and maximum visibility, sincerity and respect for the past become basic tools. Any contemporary intervention can’t be limited to simply copying the past, because such an approach will not reconstruct what was inherent to an era. To be honest means to be authentic, not trying to mimic the past in a new building, in the absence of its content, linked to the historical and social context.