Danube Agora - an urban connector between the city and the river

Authors’ Comment

The diploma project starts from the need to restore the relationship between the city of Giurgiu and the Danube, within a site where the waterfront is currently fragmented, underused and dominated by technical, logistical and industrial functions.

Ramadan Port, although strategically located and historically significant, currently functions as an isolated urban edge, with limited public access and weak connections to the city’s pedestrian routes.

The intention of the project is to transform this area into an active public space, capable of mediating between the city, the port and the river. The intervention proposes the liberation and reorganization of the waterfront, the valorisation of the River Station / Ramadan Palace as a heritage landmark, and the introduction of a hybrid programme combining commercial, productive, cultural and leisure functions.
The Danubian fish market becomes the anchor programme of the project, reinterpreting a traditional local activity in a contemporary form, open both to the community and to visitors.

The project aims to separate technical and public flows, allowing port activities, supply logistics, fish processing and boat access to coexist with the promenade, the urban square, viewing platforms, restaurant, café and Danube interpretation centre. Through footbridges, pedestrian and cycling routes, landscaped green areas and public platforms, the intervention creates continuity between the city and the riverbank.

Architecturally, the project proposes a light, visible and contemporary structure, inspired by the language of port infrastructures and industrial halls. The fragmented roof, metal structure and translucent façades define a new image of the Danube waterfront, without competing with the existing monument. In this way, the project becomes an instrument of urban regeneration, socio-economic reactivation and reconstruction of the city’s identity through its reopening towards the river.

Thus, in a city affected by urban decline, the project proposes regeneration through the valorisation of local resources and the continuity of port memory. The intervention does not erase the existing layers of the site, but reinterprets them as an architectural palimpsest, in which commercial tradition, the relationship with the river and the port identity become the foundation for a new form of urban activation, capable of carrying local specificity forward through a contemporary architectural language.