Magic Blocks 2010 – interventions

This article can be found in: Interventions, Magic blocks, Slider Magic blocks

Calea Moşilor 2010: an aggressive and grey concrete curtain, specific to the ‘80s, which cuts a historical fabric and divides the city in two: in front of the boulevard a dense and well equipped city, yet ugly and aggressive, and behind, the historical city, hidden and isolated.

The project team proposed a series of interventions meant to activate the area behind the curtains of blocks, as spaces of community and public places part of the historical fabric. Those abandoned places after the totalitarian interventions have a huge potential to locate certain genuine public places, articulate the two kinds of city and reintegrate in the collective memory, in the urban structure and the general touristic circuit of an isolated heritage. The project aimed at very small sites, unoccupied and unclaimed by anyone, where various types of interventions were carried out, symbolically, with the participation of the locals, meant to meet their immediate needs but also respect and express the development scenario of that place. The interventions – were four: a passage, a playground, a bench as a staircase, and a close turned into an open living – were meant to test the ideas of the project, stimulate the start of real interventions and support the locals in expressing their opinions and get involved better in the change of their own life space.

Project authors: Zeppelin Association, Point4, Archis Interventions, Hackenbroich Architekten, in cooperation with ATU, Space Syntax România, StudioBASAR, Platforma 9.1.
Supported by: Erste Stiftung, Administration of National Cultural Heritage, Goethe Institut, Union of Romanian Architects, Centre for Visual Introspection. Partner: Roca.