Filaret Centre for Restoration and Reuse

Authors’ Comment

The Filaret Power Station and the Șerban Vodă Depot still bear traces of a life shaped by work and skill, making their present silence and decay a poignant reminder of their lost place in the city. Their condition echoes a concern familiar to architectural practice: the difficulty of finding craftspeople able to translate drawings into built detail, and the growing distance between design and making. Restoring a purpose to these buildings becomes a way of recovering the culture of work and knowledge they once sustained.

The proposed Centre for Restoration and Reuse approaches craft as knowledge acquired through making, grounding the project in repair and adaptation as forms of material and cultural continuity. Traces of time, fragments and imperfections remain part of the buildings’ architectural value, while new interventions add a distinct layer to the existing fabric, connecting the recovery of the complex with the reuse of architectural elements salvaged from the changing city.

The Power Station houses classrooms, studios, individual workspaces and a library with a reading room within independent box-in-a-box structures, set apart from the historic envelope. This separation preserves the hall’s spatial continuity and keeps its steel trusses and original fabric visible, allowing learning to unfold in direct contact with the heritage being studied and passed on.

The Depot accommodates workshops for wood, metal, mineral materials, glass and upholstery, supported by facilities for receiving, treating, storing and dispatching salvaged components. Its layout follows the existing structural grid and retains the hall’s longitudinal character, while carefully managed views into the workshops allow visitors to understand how fragments are assessed, repaired and prepared for reuse, making manual work part of the centre’s educational and cultural life.

A contemporary wing along the length of the complex brings education, production and display together, reinterpreting the Depot’s structural rhythm and the Power Station’s basilican section to create a new public face for the centre. Its façade combines vertical concrete fins with glazed display cases, forming a visible urban archive in which salvaged joinery, ironwork, ceramic panels and fragments of finishes become part of the building’s public identity, held within a common framework that preserves their individual character.

A public street, a square for the flea market and a network of pedestrian routes reopen the former industrial site, while a planted square opening onto Calea Șerban Vodă connects the centre to the surrounding city. Reclaimed materials are incorporated directly into the outdoor spaces, extending the work of recovery beyond the workshops and bringing learning, making and exchange together in a place where heritage is sustained through active use.