Rehabilitation of the former S.N.T.R. tobacco fermentation warehouses, Găești, Dâmbovița: From abandonment to a new productive landscape

Authors’ Comment

The site chosen for this diploma project is located on the southern periphery of Găești, Dâmbovița County, an industrial complex comprising the former tobacco fermentation warehouses, currently in an advanced state of degradation. The ensemble sits in the immediate vicinity of the railway station, an infrastructure that historically facilitated the export of local production; today, however, the railway tracks act as a physical barrier and a sharp boundary severing the dynamic town center from the abandoned industrial zone.
Prior to the fall of the communist regime, the industrial periphery functioned as the town's urban center of gravity, where productive activities dictated daily rhythms and fostered a shared sense of community. Găești’s historical trajectory evolved from a market town to an urban center defined by mass production. Today, this continuum has been abruptly fractured, giving way to urban shrinkage. Through the introduction of an agrifood market and a horticultural production facility, this diploma project proposes a return to the town’s commercial roots and the reclamation of its identity by reactivating its defining assets over the former workers' infrastructure. The program is conceived to sustain continuous daily activity and foster long-term community engagement.
The architectural and landscape approach was guided primarily by the careful examination of the site’s overlapping historical layers, a principle informed by and adapted from the methodology of Latz + Partner. This process involved comprehensive documentation at both the contextual scale (accessibility, public green spaces, and the dialectic between industrial scale and domestic fabric) and the architectural scale (pathologies, structural decay, and vanished architectural features reconstructed through comparative research in international archives).
Grounded in this analytical framework, the project adopts an ethos of conservation and adaptive reuse: mature trees are preserved and integrated into the outdoor landscape layout, while the industrial ruins are stabilized and repurposed to accommodate a program responsive to current community needs. The entire precinct is re-envisioned as a productive park, a green space that transcends mere ornament to operate functionally through fruit orchards, a tree nursery, aromatic herb and vegetable gardens, and composting facilities, thereby restoring Găești’s agricultural heritage at a tangible local scale. Regarding the built fabric, the two warehouse volumes receive differentiated spatial treatments unified by the principles of critical reconstruction: volumes are completed where architectural logic warrants, complementing the original materiality while maintaining a subtle, legible distinction between the new intervention and the historic fabric.