Multifunctional Performing Arts Centre, Berzei 21

Authors’ Comment

The diploma proposal envisions an architectural program that engages communities through the dimension of performing arts. It aims to establish a framework of shared norms and values, serving as a response to the increasing commodification of urban space and the privatization processes that often exclude communities—especially their vulnerable members—from participating in urban life.
By leveraging the porosity of the site, located at the center of the urban block bounded by Calea Plevnei, Berzei and Știrbei Vodă Street, the proposed function generates alternative public routes. These pathways connect the two different ground levels of the site (+5.50 and 0.00 m) and are punctuated by squares, generous green spaces, and covered areas, encouraging the community’s free appropriation and self-organization in the use of the unbuilt portions of the complex. Vertical accents “perforate” the surrounding curtain of apartment buildings, turning the project into an urban signal.
The proposed functions support the city’s cultural development and create access for children and youth to a diverse and inclusive institutional framework. The program of Multifunctional Performing Arts Centre holds national relevance (accommodating the National Center for Dance), while also addressing the needs of the city. Embracing the principle of universal design, the project ensures high accessibility for all users, regardless of mobility level.
Artistic diversity and freedom of expression are embodied through a variety of performance and rehearsal spaces, capable of responding not only to the current programmatic demands, but also to future ones. The ensemble’s transparency, achieved through extensive glazing, facilitates dialogue among beneficiaries, professionals in the performing arts, and the wider public.
A core generator of the project is the integration of the St. Ștefan “Stork’s Nest” Church into the site plan and the restoration of the communal space that historically existed, but was erased during the recent totalitarian period. The connection between the proposed centre, the “upper city,” and the church which is currently hidden behind totalitarian-era blocks and surrounded by an improvised parking lot, is reestablished by embedding experimental halls into the site’s slope. This creates a necessary relation between past and present, establishing an active morphological dialogue. Treweaving of the church’s space, conceived in an archaic manner but erased by the 1980s totalitarian urbanism, territorially restructures the community. Thus, it is proposed to heal an urban trauma by offering the church and its community space an expansion and spatial link to the southern area – free and open movements, amplified by common spaces.
The project preserves the historic buildings on site, while demolition is limited to structurally compromised buildings with no heritage value. Historical structures are either renovated or proposed for vertical extension. Materials salvaged from demolitions: brick, glass, metal, are reintegrated into the new interventions. Memory is thus preserved through circularity and adaptive reuse, aligning with a sustainable vision. Large, covered exterior spaces announce public squares, places for temporary markets, open-air workshops, and free performances.
Ultimately, the cohesive vision of the ensemble proposes an imaginative reading of the site’s transformation that reweaves the city at topological, functional, and community levels.