PZP Arhitectura managed to appropriate a standard program in order to create a building with urban potential whose image visibly clashes with the uniformity of the immediate context.
Piata Muncii is an important crossroad of large boulevards rather than a true square with quality public space. The most important boulevard, Mihai Bravu, which is also part of the central ring, separates two types of urban fabrics: on the one hand, the closed and homogenous front walls of the 80’s blocks facing Calea Calarasilor and Decebal Boulevard, and on the other hand, the fragmented, small scale neighborhood towards Basarabia Boulevard.
The office building is located in the big alveolar space created by these blocks near Mihai Bravu Boulevard. The height of the building had been regulated by an older DUP (detailed urban plan). It provides a visual finishing mark for the front side of Calea Calarasilor and Decebal Boulevard as they get closer to Piata Muncii. In the square, this emphasized accent becomes the predominant element. On the larger scale of the entire area, the building initiates a visual dialogue between the two parts of the boulevard, marking the perspective line from Basarabia Boulevard.
Initially, the architects suggested an open ground floor, to be used as a pedestrians’ public space. It would have meant a victory of urban planning at a unique scale in this city. The uniqueness and quality of this gesture could have compensated for the lost square meters through a positive image capital. The only trace of this first suggestion was the construction of a commercial ground floor, hence a space open to the city. Another urban gesture is the use of the excess private area resulted from the irregular form of the plot of land as a public sidewalk endowed with embedded lamp fittings. It is true that the relation with part of the neighboring area is pretty strange, as a result of the lack of coordination and the provisional state so typical for post-socialist development: the plot of land behind the tower now hosts a gas station and nobody knows its future destination; as for the three-cornered small square facing Mihai Bravu Boulevard, unfortunately the architects’ plan to make a partnership between the investor and the mayor’s office in order to develop this area failed. The extent to which the construction of the building will manage to activate the creation of an authentic public space remains to be seen.
The morphology of the building is simple, a vertical expansion of the plan. The entrance is located on the ground floor of the alveolus facing Decebal Boulevard. This way the transparent knot of panoramic elevators is exposed to the city and vice-versa.
The square is enriched with an advanced volume and as a result this element becomes actively involved in the dialogue with the traffic flows. The overall treatment is the expression of this dialogue by distorting orthogonality and homogeneity into a random principle.
This gives the volume a peripheral kinetics which seems plastically generated by the almost physical impact with the traffic dynamics.
The resulting broken slots dilate or contract on the entire surface of the building and from the inside, their random design fits the views of the heterogeneous city texture. The interior space is based on plastic innovation with a minimum investment, the special elements being made possible (such as the façade playfulness or the spectacular access hallway) due to the material savings in other area, whose image is a (somewhat diluted) reference to industrial pragmatism.
The building was determined by harsh economic parameters (maximum square meters, economy and feasibility). Thus, the final product is rather the result of the architects’ adjustment of a conventional standard solution in order to respond in a challenging way to a complicated context. The challenge is not a blatant one, but the result of an apparently ambiguous approach. The firm relation between the building volume and the scale and mass of the surrounding blocks is counterbalanced by the huge difference between its image and the rational homogeneity of the background. This second aspect is justified by the reference to the dynamics of traffic flow in the square and to the diluted and heterogeneous texture of the area beyond Mihai Bravu Boulevard, in an intuitive attempt to connect to as many elements specific to Piata Muncii as possible.
The architects managed to appropriate a crude economic approach and turn it into a project which resonates with a heterogeneous area. They were able to innovate at a smaller scale than that of the generous and thoroughly urban gestures that may seem apparently not to serve the best economic interests. Let’s hope this kind of gestures will be found on the agenda of some of our developers and/or elected authorities.
Photo: Andrei Margulescu
