Extension of the Bucharest School of Arts

Authors’ Comment

Leisure education is a way of spending your free time. It is voluntary and open to anyone, regardless of age or social and economic background. Leisure education does not follow a mandatory curriculum. It does not replace traditional education but rather complements it. It involves alternative teaching methods and takes place in a different kind of school setting. We refer here to this kind of art schools that offer non-compulsory art lessons to students of all ages, outside of the mandatory school system. In this sense, the school becomes a place for leisure education.

The project focuses on the expansion of The Bucharest School of Arts, whose classes are held in an undersized space that is inadequately adapted to the program and modern needs. The selection and foundation of this diploma topic are based primarily on my personal experiences and memories as a former student in a folk art institution in Bucharest, supported by numerous site visits and conversations with the staff of The Bucharest School of Arts. These small investigations helped me to outline an initial image of the reality of folk art schools in Romania. Despite being overlooked by the authorities, these schools represent today one of the few stable pillars for public cultural education.

Today, the Bucharest School of Arts remains the only public institution in the capital dedicated to recreational artistic education, accessible to people of all ages. Managed by the Bucharest City Hall, the school currently has over 700 students, ranging in age from 4 to 70, with a much higher annual demand for enrollment—one that cannot be met due to the limitations imposed by its restricted infrastructure. Thus, although the school’s location has a long-standing tradition in the educational and cultural field, its interior spaces remain outdated and no longer meet the demands and specific needs of contemporary leisure artistic education.

Located at 100 Cuza Vodă Street, in the old tanners' neighborhood developed in the second half of the 19th century around the leather workshops along the Dâmbovița River, the surroundings of the school are marked by contrasting urban situations. Situated amid small-scale dwellings, bordered by narrow and crowded streets that have been altered and visually fragmented over time, the school’s courtyard, along with the adjacent vacant lot, extends toward the frontage on Dimitrie Cantemir Boulevard — a major part of the North–South axis — which isolates and encloses the interior of the urban block.

In this regard, the project aims to endow the School of Arts with adequate and contemporary spatial infrastructure, capable of supporting its current activities and anticipating future demands. This is grounded in the school’s potential role as a formative institution in the broader context of public education and cultural dissemination. Simultaneously, the proposal addresses the surrounding urban fabric, seeking a coherent integration into the site and functioning as a mediator between the city’s heavily trafficked boulevards and the adjacent low-density residential tissue. The extension of the existing school is strategically positioned to complete the urban frontage along the adjacent Poterași Street, while also activating the unbuilt core of the lot. A key architectural gesture is the articulation of a visual, spatial, and functional connection between the two volumes — the existing and the proposed. The unifying pergola delineates a continuous spatial path that frames the multifunctional outdoor amphitheater, conceived as an integral component of the project. This space acts as a threshold—an ordering device mediating between interior and exterior, old and new, the school and city.