Bucarest – In between space and regulation

Posted on: 1st June 2023

INTERACTIVE BLIND DATE BUCURESTI

by Mai Joseph and Robert Körner

questionning an abandoned deconstruction site

We are glad to post an interactive Blind Date which was held with professionals, researchers and international students on the 25th May 2023 about in between spaces in Bucarest. How are they perceived and how can we question and rethink them?

History

The site is located in the centre of Bucarest – near to the calea Victoriei

History – The deconstruction site was first a garden for the protected site next to it, before being nationalized and tranformed into a garage during the communist time. It was then privatized again and a Greek owner illegally built a five-storey building, which was demolished last year after a seven-year legal dispute by the neighbours in the protected building.

Nevertheless, this location is perceived as complex by the neighbours and the stakeholders involved: some of them envisioning a public space, others seeing it as a part of a potential Holocaust museum, while they are still plans for a new appartment buillding.

Local Event:

What to do with this deconstrution site – a site unused since over an half a year with an unclear future? How these spaces are used in Bucarest? Who could benefit from them?

To discuss about it, we brought together professionals and students to try out different scenarios. The goal was to present the complexity and the diversity of the possibilities of these places in the city.

To try to answer to these questions and to redefine the space, we conducted small informal actions with stone models and drawings. This informality stimulate freedom and creativity – some main words for the participants about this space.

How to question these spaces by doing informality?

Forming 4 groups

Discussing and drawing different possibilities

Trying different scenarios in the small scale stone models

Presenting and discussing together the different possibilities

In a second part of the event, thanks to our participants who presented some projects of in between spaces, we got a larger vision of this topic, in Bucarest and internationally.

Presentation of Alex Axinte from Studio Basar about the “Garaj Deschis/Open Garage” Research in Bucarest