MAGIC BLOCKS – behind the concrete curtain
With the support of: Erste Foundation, Goethe Institut, AFCN, UAR, Roca

Activation of central urban areas along the boulevards of socialist Bucharest. Case Study: Calea Mosilor street.

The results will be presented at the Centre for Visual Introspection,  Enei Church Street, no. 16, district 1, Bucharest, from  October 14 to November 5, schedule: from Wednesday to Friday:15:00-18:00 and Saturday: 14:00-18:00  (or by appointment at office@pplus4.ro, www.pplus4.ro)

Calea Mosilor 2010: a curtain of gray concrete, specific for ’80s, that cuts historical tissue and breaks the city in two. In front of the boulevard we find a dense and well equipped city, but ugly and aggressive, and behind the curtain of concrete there is a historical city hidden and isolated. It is probably about the most characteristic case for Bucharest: a series of huge blocks and almost continuous, stretched along the main axes of the city.

Following the “Magic Blocks” project, initiated last year, the team is now proposing a series of interventions in order to activate the area behind the blocks as community spaces and public places in the historical tissue.

These places left abandoned from totalitarian operations have enormous potential for the location of real public spaces, articulating the two types of city and return in the collective memory in urban structure and a heritage tourist circuit generally isolated. The project proposes strategies to recover the public space and to integrate it in the city by using very small pieces of unoccupied and unclaimed land behind these blocks.  In these spaces will take place different types of interventions with the involvement of the local community.

An initiative of: Zeppelin Association, Archis Interventions, Point4, Hackenbroich Architekten, Architecture magazine (www.e-zeppelin.ro).

With the support of: Erste Foundation, the Goethe Institut, AFCN, UAR, Roca.

The results will be presented at the Centre for Visual Introspection,  Enei Church Street, no. 16, district 1, Bucharest, from 14 of October to 5 of November, 2010, schedule: from Wednesday to Friday:15:00-18:00 and Saturday: 14:00-18:00  (or by appointment at office@pplus4.ro, www.pplus4.ro)

Project presented at the Bucharest Architecture Biennale 2010.
www.bab.ro