Heritage Competence Centre in the Historic Centre of Brașov

Authors’ Comment

Design Brief
The project proposes a Heritage Competence Centre in the historic centre of Brașov, located on Gheorghe Dima Street no. 1, Șcheii Brașovului, on the site of the first civic hospital of Brașov, currently in an advanced state of degradation. The project continues the theoretical direction developed in the dissertation “Between School and Memory: Education through Heritage”, which explores heritage not only as an object to be preserved or exhibited, but as an active support for education, practice and transmission.
The starting point of the project is the need for a local infrastructure dedicated to built heritage. Brașov is a city defined by historical layers, craftsmanship, education, fortifications, bastions and a dense historic fabric. However, despite this valuable heritage, the city lacks a place where education, restoration, research, material study and public mediation can function together. The proposed centre responds to this absence by creating a hybrid institution: school, workshop, laboratory, archive and public cultural space.
The site plays an essential role in the argument. Situated at the boundary between the Citadel and Șchei, close to the Black Church, Honterus Court, the city walls and Gheorghe Dima Park, it becomes a space of mediation between the historic city and contemporary use. Its history as Brașov’s first civic hospital introduces the idea of care, observation and intervention. The project reinterprets this memory: the former place of care for the vulnerable body becomes a place of care for vulnerable fragments of built memory - objects, materials, techniques, buildings and traces of the city.
The intervention begins with a differentiated reading of the existing ensemble. Buildings with historical and architectural value are preserved, restored and reintegrated, while later additions that affect the coherence of the site are removed. The new volume completes the enclosure and restores spatial continuity through a sober contemporary language, without imitating the historic fabric, but attentive to rhythm, mass, scale and materiality.
The programme is organised around the idea of a school-workshop. The basement contains archives, storage, technical spaces, analysis laboratories and preventive conservation areas. The ground floor hosts the restoration workshops for masonry, mortars, plaster, finishes, stone, lapidary elements, wood, historic joinery and sculpture. The upper floor is dedicated to exhibitions, research, conferences and mediation, while the attic contains the library, media library, classrooms and study spaces.
A key principle of the project is the route of the heritage object: degradation, restoration, interpretation and archiving. The object enters the centre as a vulnerable fragment, is documented and analysed, restored in the workshops, presented to the public and finally integrated into a material or digital archive.
The courtyard, passageway, portico and transitional spaces structure the relationship between the public and the specialised activities. They become spaces of encounter, orientation and observation, allowing the restoration process to become visible without disturbing professional work.
Through this transformation, the former first civic hospital of Brașov becomes a school-workshop, a laboratory and a public cultural infrastructure dedicated to built heritage. The project does not treat heritage as a static image, but as a living process of research, repair, interpretation and transmission. It reactivates an abandoned site as a place where the city’s memory can be practised, taught and shared.