Reactivating the Historic Center of the Constanța Peninsula. The Interplay of Public Functions and Collective Housing

Authors’ Comment

The project proposes the reactivation of the historic centre of the Constanța Peninsula through collective housing and hybrid functions. The Peninsula is one of the city's most valuable territories: a dense historical stratification, a privileged position between the city and the sea, and a distinctive urban identity. Even so, the area faces depopulation, deterioration of its built fabric and predominantly seasonal use. The decline of the resident population and the shift towards tourism have weakened the continuity of everyday life and the relationship between heritage and community.

The research starts from three concepts: the urban void, the urban hybrid and collective housing as social infrastructure. The urban void is understood not only as a physical discontinuity in the built fabric, but also as a break in social relations and urban memory, with the potential to reconnect. Hybrid functions and collective housing are the mechanisms that can generate permanent use, functional diversity and stable community ties.

The site lies on the pedestrian axis between the Capitoline Wolf Statue and Ovid Square, roughly halfway between the two landmarks. Today an urban void, the plot becomes a new intermediate node along the route: a place to stop, meet and interact, linking the fragmented sequences of public space.

Historical plans show that the urban blocks are built along their perimeter, with continuous street fronts and closed, inaccessible interiors. The project keeps the logic of the continuous front but reinterprets it as permeable. Passages and openings extend public space into the block, and the inner courtyard becomes a continuation of the urban route. Setbacks and recesses in the volume form small squares. Pedestrian movement takes priority, and car access is limited to residents and deliveries.

The programme combines collective housing with cultural, educational, commercial and community functions, so that the ensemble is used all year round. The dwellings are organised on a repetitive modular grid that allows different configurations and changes over time, for varied family structures and ways of living: family life, working from home, shared living. The access galleries act as intermediate spaces between the public courtyard and the private dwellings and encourage encounters between neighbours. The vertical cores, placed at the corners of the courtyard, connect public space with the shared circulation of each level.

The apartment grid is generated by a glued laminated timber structure, left exposed. Timber reduces the carbon footprint and gives the living spaces a warm atmosphere. Towards the city, the volume steps back and steps down in height, gradually fitting the ensemble among its neighbours, while loggias, balconies and terraces give depth to the facades through a play of solid and void. The intervention is contemporary and relates to the historic context through scale, rhythm and the expression of the structure, without formal imitation.

The project concludes that the revitalisation of a historic centre cannot be reduced to the conservation of built heritage. It requires rebuilding the relationship between community, public space and everyday life. In the Constanța Peninsula, collective housing, together with hybrid functions and active shared spaces, can bring the historic centre back into the present-day dynamics of the city.