BUCHAREST 2000

Thematic dossier

Central area of the Capital, before the beginning of the Victoria Socialism - New Civic Center project

In the last decade of the last century, Bucharest organized a major urban planning competition aimed at producing ideas for revitalizing the central area of the city, which had been severely affected by the construction of the new civic centre and other projects of the "Golden Era", as the Ceausescu period was commonly known.
Background
On March 4, 1977, in the Vrancea seismic zone, at a depth of about 120-140 km, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale occurred. The quake had devastating effects outside the Carpathian arc: dozens of buildings collapsed or were severely damaged, thousands of people were killed, and there was huge material damage in a poor and politically and socially isolated country.
The whole of Bucharest became a construction site: thousands of tons of rubble were quickly evacuated and a large-scale consolidation of the damaged buildings began immediately. This was the beginning of the massive intervention in the city's central area. The ideas and proposals contained in the 1935 Systematization Outline were revived: building on the Arsenal Hill, redevelopment of the Dâmbovița River, a metro line along the river, the Bucharest-Danube Canal, reconfiguration of the route of some major streets in the central area of the city and many others.
Massive demolitions in the central area took place in particular after 1985, when the Civic Center project was launched. At the same time, large housing complexes were being built intensively all over the city, in peripheral areas - Drumul Taberei, Berceni, Balta Albă, Electronicii, Aviației; in all the localities of the Ilfov Agricultural Sector, which was an administrative sub-unit of the Capital, construction works were being carried out - administrative centers, housing, infrastructure, but also massive expropriations and demolitions, as a result of the policy of restricting the buildable perimeter of the localities.
The construction effort quickly outstripped both the financing possibilities and the capacity of the national building materials industry. The crisis had deepened, so that by the end of the 1990s many construction sites were paralyzed and working at much reduced capacity due to the shortage of building materials and labour.

Demolitions in the Uranus area - photos by Andrei Pandele

The year 1990
In 1990, Bucharest was a city heavily affected by demolitions; not a single project in the central area had been completed. There was still a lot of vacant land or land with "frozen" works in the early stages. Until the rebalancing of the institutional system into a new paradigm, which was taking shape after the events of December 1989, the municipality had extremely limited financial and institutional possibilities and, as a consequence, most of the construction works of the housing estates were halted. Priority was given to public infrastructure projects that were absolutely necessary for the normal functioning of the city - the Dâmbovița bridges, the closure of the main traffic ring - the Iancu de Hunedoara area, the Ciurel-Crângași area, etc.
At the same time, the first major real estate project - World Trade Center - Sofitel/Pullman Hotel and offices, together with a French partner, was started and completed. The emulation of this project, as well as the general atmosphere, encouraged us to think about the reconstruction of the central area of the Capital - around the People's House/Parliament Palace and further on the vacant land in the Căuzași area.
We were beginning to be open to the rich world, we were seeing different models of development, and institutional building was beginning to take shape. At the same time, we were realizing the city's financial incapacity and the prospects for development were still unclear.
In these circumstances, we tried to define a development perspective for Bucharest in the new context that was taking shape. Together with the Minister of Culture, Mr. Viorel Mărginean, we initiated a consultation, with the participation of the leaders of the creative unions and other personalities of the time. We then tried to find information in the academic world about the future of the city, the area and the country.
The turmoil was still too great, and at that time we could not find any valid information to foreshadow an immediate future; we could not outline a vision for the future of Bucharest - a free city in a territory rich in resources but lacking in economic power. Moreover, the legislative and institutional building process was moving slowly: fundamental laws on public administration, property, public services, public finance, etc. were published belatedly, amid the debate on the powers and limitations of the minimal state.
For Bucharest, things were even more complicated. The central area, which had been deconstructed, was beginning to be the subject of real estate claims - most of them justified - and, what was more, a slight real estate pressure was beginning to mount.
Basic data on - first of all - real estate ownership was lacking: lack of cadastre, lack of precise information on how expropriation and demolition would be carried out, lack of precise information on the building infrastructure, but above all the economic crisis made it difficult to find an investment formula for the Civic Center of the Capital.

Civic Center area, 1990

Under these circumstances, in 1991, a series of proposals for large-scale projects came from foreign financial groups. Among others, negotiations started for a project in the area of Mircea Voda street and for a second project in the Izvor area. For the latter, the interested British group hired the Norman Foster team to draw up the master plan. The project was to be financed by a group of Romanian banks, in the form of a banking syndicate, linked with major British banks. In the absence of precise information on land ownership in the project area, we chose the option of setting up a development agency to own the land in question, the value of which was to be established with the help of specialized foreign firms. The rightful owners within the perimeter of the project could have opted to receive the value of the land or to remain in the project as a shareholder.
In this way, we were trying, largely following a similar recipe applied in Beirut - the Solidere project - but also understanding the principles applied in Germany, in the eastern Länder - that investment has priority - to unblock the major project to rebuild the capital.
Norman Foster visited Bucharest, then a delegation from the City Hall went to London. Things seemed to be going well - several financial institutions were interested, a major British entrepreneur was also planning to start business in the East, but in Bucharest the riots started. I was informed by a fax, received soon after my return to Bucharest, that the project was on hold for an unspecified period until the Romanian state became an institutional and constitutional administrator able to control the national territory.

Urban planning competition
In the winter of 1995, we began preparations for the urban planning competition "Bucharest 2000". The initiative belonged to the Union of Architects and the project was supported by the Ministry of Public Works and Spatial Planning, under the patronage of the President of Romania. The Bucharest City Hall was invited as organizer and co-funder.
The project was seen as a manifesto and, at the same time, a test for public administration in the campaign for Romania's accession to NATO and the European Union.
The stakes were very high and the subject was of great professional interest - the reconstruction of the central area of a large city, destroyed during a reckless campaign of forced remodeling.
Under the encouragement of Dan Sergiu Hanganu, who, through his involvement, ensured the quality of the competition, the project benefited from an exceptional participation - jury, technical committee, competitors, organizers.
The competition theme was drafted by a team from the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest. In the absence of important data - land ownership, the real estate market, the development outlook for the area and the city, at a time when the new legislative and institutional system was not yet in place - the chosen competition formula was a competition of ideas, with the aim of defining the solutions for implementing the winning project.
The competition was launched in 1995; by the end of the year, 656 teams from 45 countries had registered.
After the first phase, 15 out of the 235 projects submitted were selected for the second phase. To these 15 projects, 3 others were added, considered to be "manifesto projects", valuable for their innovative ideas. For the second phase, the jury debated the projects proposed for the area of the People's House - Parliament Palace.

Winning project - Meinhart von Gherkan team - Germany

Most of the contestants were looking for a solution to integrate the new buildings into the morphology of the old city. By intensively occupying the area adjacent to the People's House with compact, tall buildings and long street structures, the competitors tried to soften the dominating presence of the building, which was built on a scale and in an architectural formula that was related to the dictators' ego, but without any connection to the existing urban reality. This gave rise to proposals that set up a European model, with islands occupied by built fronts, located on the street alignment, with a firm demarcation between public space - outside and private space - inside the site, a formula with a good real estate yield, but far from the specificity of the place.
Some competitors have chosen the solution of partially dismantling the People's House or even covering it with a huge earth embankment, with a grassed and landscaped slope. There were proposals to fragment the route of the Boulevard of Victory of Socialism - Boulevard of Unification, by compact planting, by placing buildings in the central area or even by demolishing some buildings and rebuilding streets that existed before the demolition in '85.
Some teams that have a better understanding of the city's problems and with a clear urban planning experience have made proposals to solve the traffic problems by rebuilding old streets or new routes compatible with the functioning of the central area of a locality.
In general, we noticed a certain discrepancy between the intensity of construction, as proposed in most of the projects, in relation to the formula for resolving and sizing the public space.
German architect Meinhard von Gerkan's team won the competition and was awarded the prize at a ceremony in September 1996.
An exhibition of all participating projects was organized at the Parliament building. Subsequently, the Capital City Hall commissioned and realized an urban plan in the competition area, based on the winning German solution.
Negotiations then began to set up an institution - in the form of a public development agency - that would take over the task of realizing the project. After much hesitation, the project was abandoned.
Obviously, over time, the urban planning solutions became obsolete. Today we have a different understanding of the area. I believe that, in the new context, a project for the central area of the capital must be placed in a different vision, in which the complex of the dictatorship's presence, represented by the Parliament Palace, has diminished, and the value and quality of the public space is of major importance, so the intense construction on the available free spaces is not a solution for the spatial reorganization of the area.
After the competition, a number of projects appeared in the study area, but for various reasons they could not be realized. Thus, on the land on which the construction of the Romanian Opera House had started - about 10 ha - a project was initiated for a mixed-function complex of buildings - administrative, commercial, residential, services of various categories - known under the commercial name of Esplanada.
A second project, the Justice District, for which the Romanian Government has initiated the preliminary procedures necessary for the start of the investment - stabilization of the legal status of the land, obtaining solid financing from an international institution - should have started on a plot of land with an area of about 4 ha, located in the eastern part of the same land, the one on which there are foundations of the Romanian Opera.
For the time being, the institutional incapacity and, above all, problems concerning the legal status of the land have paralyzed the two actions.
Next to the Parliament Palace - the former People's House, the new Patriarchal Cathedral and the related building complex have started - and are at an advanced stage of realization.
The competition has remained an enthusiastic event, with great media penetration, a successful political argument in the campaign for Romania's accession to NATO and the European Union.

Project
After a quarter of a century, there have been substantial changes in the city's status in Bucharest, and the economic and social conjuncture is very different from the last decade of the last century.
Romania is a member of the European Union and is also fully integrated into NATO military structures. The city has undergone major morphological transformations - large industrial platforms have disappeared, new poles of interest have emerged, the degree of motorization has increased, the level of industrial pollution has decreased, the behavior of the inhabitants has changed and, overall, the functioning of the city and the metropolitan area has changed. After a complicated period, the city has become a pole of economic growth, GDP has increased and Bucharest has become the most important urban center in the lower Danube basin. However, serious problems of local governance persist, and the permanent reforms are a waste of material resources and time.
However, the Bucharest-Ilfov region stands out for its good economic performance, accounting for around 27% of Romania's GDP. Moreover, taking into account the GDP per inhabitant in relation to daily living costs, Bucharest is above the European average - 142%, surpassing a number of major European cities - Berlin, Madrid, Prague.
The local real estate market is tending to stabilize; there are a number of investment models that have gradually imposed a good level of quality, especially in terms of office buildings and commercial premises, even if the land price game has allowed, for a certain period, shopping malls to appear in the central area on relatively cheap land, built in a formula specific to peripheral areas. The housing stock has increased, and towns adjacent to the capital have put large areas of land into the real estate market, occupied by high-quality housing. Public facilities are still inadequate, the quality of the territory is also poor, and public transport is still poorly organized and inefficient.
Under these circumstances, the real estate potential of the central area of the capital needs to be reconsidered, and any development project in this perimeter could be carried out in a different paradigm.
The recent crisis caused by Brexit among European institutions, when no financial or administrative institution leaving London chose Bucharest as the location for its new headquarters, shows that the city, although it has made significant progress, is not currently classified as an important European or even regional city.

Other projects
At the same time, similar projects were initiated in other countries. Beirut - Solidere, Paris - Rive Gauche, Cannary Wharf - London, Hammarby Sjöstad - Stockholm and many others, especially in Europe.
In all these projects, areas that have been destroyed or are in economic, social and functional decay have been remodeled and reconstructed.
All projects had a number of common features:

• The reconstruction project and the public interest were prioritized over private interest. Thus, under different legal formulas, the real estate owners or holders of any kind of property rights in the perimeter set for the project were brought together in a single operational entity, the basis for a coordinated and profitable action from all points of view.

• The investment is considered a priority and, consequently, mechanisms have been put in place to recognize the rights of legitimate property owners in cases where, at the time the project started, there was a lack of legal information on the nature of ownership - the case of the East German Länder after the Great Unification. Entitled real estate owners in the project area have the right to challenge the appraised value of the real estate, they can transfer their share and leave the project or they can remain in the project as shareholders.

• The state, as well as lower levels of public administration, have developed support programmes for the project - public investments, administrative organization, building facilities and, through specialized bodies, have moderated the process of project realization and development.

• The public administration, as well as private bodies, particularly in the financial and legal fields, monitored the project implementation process and ensured institutional transparency.

• Prestigious teams, renowned architects and urban planners were engaged at all stages of project development, starting with the initial master plan and continuing with the architectural designs for the various building objects. In this way, the new projects become models of development and also valuable cultural objects with a direct effect - the enrichment of public space.

• In all cases, even if there were some hiccups along the way, the projects, properly managed, were a great financial success, but the most important effect was social and cultural.

Short project fiches
SOLIDRE PROJECT - BEIRUT

The project was launched in 1990 and Solidere was built in 1994, with the participation of all registered real estate owners in the approximately 180 ha perimeter of the war-torn area in the center of Beirut. Subsequently, the project perimeter was extended by an additional 60 ha of land reclaimed from the sea in an area heavily affected by oil pollution following a shipping accident.
The company's capital was made up of about 1.17 billion dollars - the value of real estate properties, to which was added another 650 million dollars, capital subscribed by Lebanese, state and municipal companies and other public companies, funds that supported the campaign to prepare the project and build the infrastructure.
The project program included the reconstruction and restructuring of the area destroyed in the war, as well as the construction of about 4.7 million square meters of buildings with various functions - offices, housing, commercial premises, public institutions, cultural buildings, services. Over time, the municipality and the Lebanese state have bought back the land and public works built by Solidere.

PARIS RIVE GAUCHE PROJECT

François Mitterrand, President of France, will go down in history as the initiator of large-scale cultural projects designed to enrich France's heritage and the world's cultural heritage.
The National Library of France, inaugurated by the President in 1994, was built on land purchased by the French State in the middle of an old industrial estate near Austerlitz Station on the left bank of the Seine.
The project thus marked the beginning of a revitalization operation for the area, promoted by a public agency - SEMAPA (Société d'Economie Mixte et d'Aménagement de la Mairie de Paris). A project agency was set up for an urban renewal project involving several factories and warehouses - grain silos, workshops - on land totaling about 130 ha (the SNCF provided the project with about 26 ha of land occupied by railway installations, which were covered by the new Latin Quarter).
The project comprises buildings with various functions - housing of various categories, offices, shops, services, but also a large area allocated to public facilities - library, renovated and remodeled Austerlitz station, colleges, schools, nurseries, including the National School of Architecture.

CANARY WHARF PROJECT

The British government set up the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1980 for an area occupied by the West India Docks.
The project began in 1991, on a 97-acre (39 ha) site, and involved the construction of buildings with a total surface area of about 1.5 million square meters, with various functions - offices, retail, catering.
A series of disruptions in the construction of the transportation infrastructure caused the deal to collapse; in 1995 the project was bought out for $1.2 billion by a Middle Eastern financial group. The new company will be called the Canary Wharf Group.
The project was started in 1991, based on a master plan proposed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, together with the Yorke Rosenberg Mardall team.
In the meantime, public transport lines - subway, rail, connection to Heathrow Airport, the area's highways, as well as regionally organized shipping lines and several bicycle paths - have been built.
Rents in the area have exploded, so that residents of the Isle of Dogs, hostile at the start of the project, have become the main beneficiaries. More than 100,000 people now use the area.
What's more, the project is expanding to other land beyond the initial allocation - almost 30 hectares more on Dog Island.

Instead of conclusions
Urban planning is a much more complex activity than urban design. For a long time, we have been regulating and debating only the urban form, without understanding that real urban planning can only be carried out with the involvement of all significant urban actors - property owners, developers, insurers, financiers, but above all with the participation of a mature, professional and stable public administration.
An urban planning project does not run according to electoral cycles. Important investments always require the use of the private interest engine, put under public, transparent and positive public control; the public interest will always prevail, regulated in such a way that all project participants are satisfied beneficiaries.
Projects such as "Bucharest 2000", in the absence of complex and complete formulations, remain mere image exercises.

SUMMARY OF THE MAGAZINE ARHITECTURA, NR.5-6/ 2019
COMPETITION