Reconnecting the City to the Water. Ferry Terminal in Zimnicea

Authors’ Comment

Zimnicea. Between Decline and Reinvention
This project proposes to reconnect the city of Zimnicea with the surrounding waters – the Păsărea River, Lake Dunărica, and the Danube – through a masterplan based on three key interventions, each located at a threshold where the city meets the water. The final one is also the site of the architectural proposal: a small ferry terminal whose main role is to open a dialogue – between riverbanks, between the Danube and the community, and between the building’s three functional cores. All of this unfolds beneath a shared “roof” – not only a space for waiting, but for meeting, for reclaiming the riverfront.
Zimnicea stands as a representative example of an entire category of Danubian towns: former socialist industrial settlements near the border, set back from the river, shaped by forced industrialisation and now facing a slow post-industrial decline. In a city that has lost its landmarks and suffers from a kind of collective amnesia, the relationship with water remains the only constant – not as a nostalgic image of the past, but as a living identity resource, strong enough to become the key to local revitalisation.
This direction is explored not only through my personal attachment to the city, but more importantly through the belief that marginality can become a strategic advantage. When isolated points are connected, they become part of a network – a permeable constellation of secondary Danubian ports.
From the city centre to the river, the three interventions each occupy a different place in the collective memory.

The Păsărea River
Physically and emotionally close to the town, the Păsărea River is difficult to access due to the configuration of the so-called Port Road – the city’s only link to the port. In reality, this road functions as a protective dike during flood seasons. The proposal aims to reshape the street section and facilitate access to the riverbank through a new system of ramps adapted to the existing terrain.

Lake Dunărica
Once a branch of the Danube, turned into a lake by industrial reconfiguration of the port, Dunărica is a space where the children’s summer camp and the local kayak team coexists with the natural ecosystem. The proposed intervention is light and non-intrusive: a small canoe depot – a discreet piece of architecture supporting existing uses without disturbing the surrounding environment.

The Ferry Terminal
Today, the Zimnicea–Svishtov crossing operates through a series of provisional solutions that have somehow become permanent. In this fragmented landscape – part industrial, part natural, part ruin – the intervention uses the city grid as a spatial structuring tool. It brings order to a place without order and guides the architectural logic in a context without reference points.
The urban grid, symbolically extended from the central fabric all the way to the port, generates the terminal’s structural logic: a perimeter frame that acts as the sole load-bearing element of the building – a filter between interior and exterior. The indoor spaces become extensions of the surrounding public space, whether designed or natural. Through transparency and circulation, the building allows for dynamic spatial readings – not only horizontally, but across different levels. Moving through the building and its immediate surroundings becomes a continuous repositioning of the user in relation to the context – a constant dialogue between visitor and landscape, mediated by the architecture itself.