Thematic articles

The right to the city or who owns the city?

Motto

"...the right to the city is a cry or a demand...it is the right to information, the right to use numerous services, the right of users to make known their ideas about the time and space of their activities in urban areas, the right to use the center."¹

Lefebvre was campaigning for the right to the city, and his tone was set against the protest background of the student movements in Paris in the 60s. To reflect on this right now is an essential exercise in urban practice, understanding and engagement.

The generalized lament about post-socialist debauchery, regionalism and economic conditioning cannot be a valid argument. At least not for evading (collective, professional or individual) this exercise of normality.

Oradea's Union Square is such a context and an opportunity to raise questions about the use of a city's central space and the way in which it is instrumentalized.

Here, in brief, is the story of a project and the related composition of the relationships between urban space, history and prejudice:

Under fortuitous circumstances, at the initiative of the local administration (the good housekeeper), we (minimalist architects) were asked to develop a solution for the design of the central square of Oradea. At that time (February 2013), the city hall already had a project drawn up following a local mini-competition, later approved for European funding.

Starting from the first draft, contacting the original designer, morally charged by the legitimacy of our position, worried about the very short deadlines and the difficulty of modifying an already approved project, but unconditionally encouraged by the City Hall of Oradea and overwhelmed by the illusion of a significant chance for a very young and small design workshop, we got involved in the process of revising the initial project.

The city hall's dissatisfaction with the initial project was related to the sad image, the predominantly grey color through the granite paving, the fact that Oradea deserves a special project (not like everywhere else). Clues that were deciphered by us using wrong codes.

We decided to do a revision of the original project and not come up with a totally new solution. From our point of view, the main points that could be improved were related to accessibility, the creation of a space for events, emphasizing the spatial character of the different areas, marking and supporting urban axes, organizing the circulation, creating strategies for pedestrians to park in the square and not just cross it, taking care to provide shade and vegetation that would not block the reading of the space, and last but not least the anonymous historicist language.

Said and done.

Read the full text in Arhitectura 4/2013

Note:

1 Lefebvre, Henri: Right to the City in Writings on City, Blackwell Publishers, 1996.