Thematic folder

Mantuleasa Street kindergarten

Thematic folder

Arh.Constantin CIUREA recommends
arh. Mihaela-Violeta VRACIU

Mântuleasa Street Kindergarten

><img src= In the evening, after finishing work at the office, I leafed through the papers I received.
I was burdened with the problems of everyday life and I can say that I felt like a student again, free, unconstrained, dreaming in a corner of the workshop of all kinds of houses that we have to build.
I really liked what I saw. All the projects are beautiful.
I noticed the kindergarten proposed on Mantuleasa Street by Vraciu Mihaela-Violeta. I liked the idea and the way it fits into the urban fabric. I see it as very feasible and I really think it would be very well received by the people of Bucharest.
The tension between the language of contemporary architecture and the historical urban fabric, between the simplicity of form and the complexity of the program, between the newly-built elements and the memory of urban gardens are essential elements that define and give a new identity to the site.
The proposed solution reveals, on the one hand, a respect and understanding of our city's past and, on the other hand, a grounding in reality necessary to perceive the changes that are continually occurring in our society and to create new architectural solutions to meet the needs of the individual and the community.
I was impressed by the ability to juggle the different aspects involved and the flexibility in choosing the solutions, which are necessary qualities for any young architect nowadays.

Mihaela-Violeta VRACIU (b. 1990)

2015 - graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", Bucharest
2016 - counselor at the City Hall of Sector 4, in the Urban Planning Department
since 2016 - design in an architecture and urban planning office, where she contributed to and realized projects of individual and collective housing, offices
- in parallel, he carries out 3D scanner surveying projects involving historical monuments to be restored, interior design and scenography projects

"It's Monday morning... Children walk with their parents into the courtyard with chestnut trees. They have bloomed as they do every year, and Ana picks three fallen flowers to put in the painting room.
Today the parents come to the clay pot exhibition. The three little girls run to the playground. The little group has gym and dance. It's nice outside, I think the teacher will take the group out in the playground. The older ones go up to the greenhouses. They have planted strawberries, they need watering, and raspberries are already starting to grow...
...The site is located on Mântuleasa Street, one of the oldest streets in the capital, which creates a route that takes you through different eras. At the time of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the street was still lined with vegetable gardens, orchards and houses. In the collective memory, these places are also preserved in the stories of Mircea Eliade, who grew up and studied at the recently demolished Mantuleasa School, which stood on this land. In the existing linear route of the street, the site is that place of memories, the mystical place, with the six surviving secular chestnut trees."
(Project brief)