Workspaces on Luterană street - Bucharest

Authors’ Comment

The project started from the desire to create an educational function and, thus, I chose the central area of Bucharest as the study area, being an area with a strong educational character, where several universities and faculties are found. We chose the site on Luterana Street, being near several creative universities, the one of Architecture and Urbanism, the one of Music and the one of Arts. This is how the original function of student workspaces appeared, to provide students with all the spaces, tools and equipment needed to carry out school projects, a function open to users including at night and on weekends. Further, the function was extended to a more general nature of workspaces, including users in the creative fields and industries.
From an architectural point of view, the solution is based on the historical study of the area and the character of the street, being strongly influenced and affected by various historical architectural periods.
Thus, the most important aspect of the project intervention is the insertion on the site. For the composition and field configuration of the solution, the site is divided into two. The rear half, where the student workspaces are located, is solved by a simple principle of covering the blind walls. The front half, where the workspaces for the creative industries are found, continues the character of the discontinuous front of the street, started by the modernist buildings that appeared in the interwar period, covering the blind wall with a first volume, while a second volume appears in the continuation of the former garage building, leaving at the end a square for the public which provides a breathing space between the intervention and the office tower, in order not to create tension, the tower already being a disruptive vertical accent for this area. Both volumes from the street are distanced from the former garage building (kept as a memory of the auto shop function in the city center continuing the idea of workshops) for two reasons, that of continuing the discontinuous street front and that of generating a relationship between intervention and existing. Another square, located between the two halves, connects all the volumes on the ground floor, being a meeting and gathering place, an idea encouraged by the location of commercial public functions that open onto this space. Moreover, in order to fragment this large space, the square is "broken" by several courtyards of light and access to the underground space, where there is a large exhibition space, which also connects all the volumes, but at the underground level. In addition, the entire intervention has a fragmented, pavilion-like character, in order not to give rise to another massif that would further destroy the character of the area, as do the constructions that appeared during the communist period, namely the urban ensemble of the Palace Hall and the Bucharest Hotel, but also a stepped aspect, which generates terraces and gathering spaces for users and contributes to reducing the tension both between the volumes of the intervention and the neighboring buildings, but also between these volumes among themselves.
The interior of the volumes is also solved by a simple principle, one resistant in time, namely a service band, which allows the deployment of workspaces around them. These spaces can be left open or can be partitioned in any way. So, this conformation of spaces can accommodate various functions, which can change over time.