LS

 

Green (Urban) Block

  

The site in question is along one of the oldest commercial streets of the city of Bucharest, the Calea Rahovei, a road that in the past led to Craiova in the south west of the country, Sofia in Bulgaria or to Serbia in the west. Coming from the center of the city, the urban island is in the vicinity of  the Liberty center mall that is at the cross of Cale Rahovei and Strada Progresului.

 

The urban block is composed of 54 buildings, some of which are wagon houses or other traditional Romanian housing, some commercial constructions such as an auto garage or shop. The most predominant buildings are four housings blocks built in the communist period, where approximately 1400 people are living. The blocks are surrounded by large public space which, in time, has been partly appropriated for private use, such as a garden in front of the apartments situated at the ground floor or parking area in every empty space not enclosed by fences. Those uses are technically illegal but it actually gives the ground floor inhabitant a better quality of living by setting a distance between their own private apartment and the public space, preserving the intimacy and giving them a space to garden and enjoy some shadow in the hottest days of Romanian summer. The pergolas in front the entry, where grapes are growing, are also giving much appreciated shaded places where the elders of the community are meeting during the summer days. A park with a few benches and a playground for children is at the center of the urban island, between three of the collective buildings, but it is also surrounded by fences and cars all around.

 

After the analysis of the site, one of the first major problems appeared to be one of the streets going through the island, which is constantly occupied by intense car traffic. This multitude of cars, which is probably guided by GPS applications to take the shortest route, are simply crossing the neighborhood to avoid crossing the intersection with a red light at one of the edges of the urban block.

 

One of the main intentions for the area is to offer more livable public space. As already mentioned, we can immediately observe quite a few interesting practices in the public space (gardening at the ground floor of the blocks, the creation of pergolas...). The intention would be to propose a solution allowing people to appropriate more the space that is nowadays eaten by the cars parked everywhere around the plot.

 

The urban island is constituted of 54 buildings, but the 4 massive collective housing blocks are occupying most of its space, dominating it. The project proposed would allow the different typologies to interweave more by the gradation of public and private green spaces. Also, the idea of rethinking the roads going through the island would help reconnect the different parts and regain the unity which is lost in the present due to the roads that are today dividing the block into small entities that mix together different housing types- individual, small scale houses and the large collective units.

 

Another important goal is to bring more nature inside the plot. Nowadays, in spite of having a lot of available, free space, the plot is mostly covered in asphalt (72% of ground surface), consisting mostly of undefined areas. Creating a diversity of planted spaces between the buildings, mostly focusing on interventions at the ground level, would make the area able to receive re-creative activities or even urban agriculture.

 

In its current status, the problem of the uncontrolled parking comes to take over every free space available in the area. Our intention is to increase the necessary number of legal parking spaces in some areas and reduce the access towards the inner parts of the urban block in order to avoid the parking issue.