Research and Education Center for Forest Ecology on Cozla Hill

Authors’ Comment

The city of Piatra Neamț lies between three forested hills, one of them being Cozla Hill. This hill is part of the city's identity, having been the locals' favorite place to spend their free time for many centuries. Thus, along the hill one finds constructions and landscaping from different historical periods, including restaurants, rest pavilions, as well as trails, stairs and stone walls.
The most recent "layer" of the hill is the one right on the summit, implemented in 2005–2010 representing a failed attempt of a ski resort. A large part of the hill was deforested for a ski area involving a chairlift and a gondola line, along with a series of buildings that remained abandoned construction sites.
At the macro level, the project proposes restoring the hill's identity through a series of interventions that involve saving, removing the intrusive additions and an adaptive reuse of the historic buildings. It also proposes reforesting the forsaken ski slopes with plant species that complement the biodiversity that has settled here since the abandonment. The new species are planted in a grid that favors growth but also creates a walking path along the slope mimicking the trajectory of skiers. Along those, there can be found link areas with flora and fauna observation towers together with rest pavilions. For the city's residents, and not only, a series of new pedestrian and bike trails are proposed which, aided by the chairlift line adapted for bicycles, can become part of the network of cycling routes across the county.
As for the architectural intervention, the project focuses on the highest area of the hill. Focusing on the idea of revitalizing the abandoned areas, the main building becomes a Forest Ecology Research and Education Center. The building is divided into a private area of the center and a public zone for the visitors. The first level is in direct contact with the exterior, thus it contains the series of laboratories, germination chambers, seed bank, plant archive, and the ancillary spaces of these areas. The first floor, being the one accessible by gondola, houses the public reception area, café and a rest garden. The next floor is exclusively public, with a paleontological exhibition area, where the exhibition of fossil fish discovered on Cozla Hill is found, along with a small interactive archaeology exhibition and multipurpose spaces for presentations. The top floor consists of the greenhouses, which serve production and experimental purposes and a few other ones that are opened to visitors.
Given the size of the building, two atriums were proposed, opening toward the upper area of the greenhouses, providing additional lighting as well as ventilation and temperature control.
The chairlift building, also abandoned, is revitalized as a correlated place with the bike trails, housing a dedicated bike service floor, a café, a workshop space and a relaxation area. A part of the concrete structure becomes a tower that connects the floors.
The pavilion, with its emblematic igloo shape in the city's silhouette, keeps its metal and wood structure and transforms into a green pavilion, with an open-air performance area, a games zone and an astronomical observation point. All of these are surrounded by plants that were sown in the cracks of the concrete slab.