Urban Mobile Acumulator

Urban Spaces in Action is an unprecedented pilot project in Bucharest, initiated by an interdisciplinary team of architects, urban planners, social anthropologists and pedagogues. The project aims to act on several complementary levels: the attempt to get to know and better understand three Bucharest neighborhoods, the way their inhabitants relate to them and the dynamics of public spaces; the attempt to activate various public spaces in these neighborhoods through urban interventions and community events; the pedagogical approach to develop new skills and ways of relating to the city among young people through non-formal urban education activities in 3 schools and 2 high schools in Bucharest. (Komunitas)Context BucharestBucharest is a city in which, in large areas encompassing the majority of its population, the modernist project of radically reorganizing collective housing has been coupled with the social engineering of the communist project of creating the new man. Both projects treated the space between the blocks of flats as a backdrop, a utilitarian, transit territory. Over the last 25 years, a superficial, decorative layer has been deposited over this legacy, a wave of interventions as uniformizing as the initial project, applied by the administration concerned only with the blocks in a process that postpones the start of a moral rehabilitation of the space between the buildings. (studioBASAR)Atelier AcUMIn this context, we decided to question the chronic lack of public space, both in its physical and social dimensions. AcUM - Acumulatorul Urban Urban Mobil - is a pavilion that investigates the structure of public space in the neighborhoods and its dynamics through the activities. Erected in one week through the collective effort of a team of volunteers, student-architects and urban planners, AcUM formulated the project's intentions on the ground and temporarily transformed the public realm with local resources, engaging residents in the production of public space. The windows discarded in front of the blocks after the thermopaneling were collected from different neighborhoods and reassembled into a supporting structure, where the identity and memory of the neighborhood found its place and its audience. (studioBASAR)AcUM in the NeighborhoodsConsisting of demountable modules, the Accumulator was loaded into a truck in the backyard of our host, tranzit.ro/ Bucharest gallery, and transported to the neighborhoods, where the team of volunteers installed it in a few hours. This whole process of unloading, placement and assembly became an extension of the workshop transferred to the neighborhood. The three neighborhoods - Tei, Tineretului and Timpuri Noi - share the same utilitarian characteristics of the public realm, but also have specific differences resulting from the geography of the city, the Acumulator being designed to integrate, but also to adapt easily to the context of Bucharest. Placed in landmarks for the local geography of the neighborhoods - in Tei, in front of a post office; in Tineretului, adjacent to a church; and in Timpuri Noi, just outside a schoolyard - AcUM functioned for a few days both as an in situ research tool and as a tool to test the transformative potential of the places. All three sites struggled to find pockets along compact block-corridor boulevards, public space already occupied, contested, consumed. Borrowing from the appearance of triangular commercial totems and the intuition of the strategic location of neighborhood kiosks, AcUM transformed a passageway between the boulevard and the back of the blocks into a rest stop in the Tei neighborhood, in Tineretului it activated a partially green but fenced-in square, and in Timpuri Noi it transformed two informal parking lots into a point of attraction. Through free activities, non-formal education workshops on urban themes, exhibitions about the memory of the place, debates about the problems but also the potential of the neighborhood, expeditions through local history and geography, and film screenings, the Acumulator, supported by the Tool Box modules, gathered information, communicated with the public, tested in real time ways to activate public spaces and functioned for a few days as a meeting place and a place to trade memories, opinions or future plans.(studioBASAR)AcUM ResearchPeople were attracted by the space created by AcUM, a good opportunity for the research team to observe them in contact with it, to interact with them and to find out information about: the neighborhood, practices of public space use, problems in the neighborhood and the relationship between citizens and authorities, ways of spending leisure time. The interaction was supported by research tools such as questionnaire, interview and mind map (how citizens mentally perceive the space they live in). The Acumulator hosted a series of round tables moderated by a community facilitator. During the round tables, apart from the information obtained directly ("we have no parking spaces", "the town hall changes the curbs 7 times in 3 years", "I have been waiting since 2010 for them to rehabilitate my block", "they are not able to collect the garbage", etc.), I noticed how individualistic the citizens are, how much the sense of community, solidarity and collaboration is missing. They don't listen to each other, they are passionate, "my problem is the most important", "you don't know what you're talking about, you have no idea what the permits are like". Barriers of distrust in each other, in people's ability to work together, are present. Lack of trust in each other can be overcome when people get to know each other and interact. Closeness can be achieved through the organization of community events, round tables, urban development projects, through urban interventions that facilitate interaction between people (e.g.: creation of rest and relaxation spaces with appropriate urban furniture; creation of sports/recreational spaces for adults, creation of spaces for children). (Vlad Cătună) Credits: Urban Spaces in Action is an interdisciplinary initiative that started in May 2014 and will end in October 2015. The project is coordinated by the Komunitas Association, in partnership with the Bucharest Sports and Youth Department, tranzit.ro Association, ArtWe Association and supported by the group of architects studioBASAR. Urban Spaces in Action is financed by EEA grants 2009-2014, within the NGO Fund in Romania. For official information about the EEA and Norwegian grants, see www.eeagrants.org, www.fondong.fdsc.ro.

AcUM participants: Adela Iacoban, George Cocai, Diana Cristina Postolache, Diana Cristina Postolache, Ana Maria Țoni, Iulia Radion, Oana-Luiza Mihai, Cristina Tamaș, Ioana Săraru, Cristian Drâmbă, Daniela Palimariu, Beatrice Duiculescu, Popescu Viorel Cosmin, Gruian Cosmin, Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Tudor Elian, Maria Daria Oancea, Alin Voitescu, Cristi Stoian, George Marinescu, Diana Buța, Magda Juravlea, Andrei Drâmbă, Mihai Timcea, Ivona Dumitrache, Roxana Popescu, Miruna Târcă, Silviu Marcu, Sabina Lefter.

Urban researchers: Vlad Cătună, Andrada Ionescu, Alexandra Ciocănel, Andrei Alb, Ramona Beian, Mădalina Mihai, Maria Stănciuc, Andreea Ivașcu, Ioana Petrache, Ștefan Monica, Ana Despoiu, Andrei Pop, Cătălina Soloveanu.

AcUM Event - Urban Spaces in Action: