Ailanthus Altissima
Team: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan and Marius Mitran
Year: 2010
A (Temporary) Manifesto for the Historical City Center
In the state of tabula rasa, in terms of moral, strategic and functional character The Old City Center reinvents itself from a dirty slum, into a huge summer terrace: inhabitants disappear and the terraces begin to articulate the streets in a continuous mirth pontoon. Without this refreshing wave to spread, too often, above the ground level which has been turned into restaurants, bars, cafes, the deplorable physical condition of the buildings persists and the exagerated horizontal mono-functionality deepens with every summer.
Perhaps after waves of beer, the transformation into an époque film setting will follow, as it happened in other old centers of some central and western European cities: shopping Disneyland’s, sceneries that only serve for consumption and trade. Meanwhile, professional public competitions, such as the one for the restoration of the Gabroveni Inn, recall in the public discourse of architecture arbitrary notions such as aligning the cornice or the proportion between windows and walls. This tendency of looking to the past as to a museum of ‘honorable’ forms will produce nothing else than other settings. Why the lack of debate about the character of some streets in downtown Bucharest who had once represented the heart of the capital? We propose a Pro-active Manifesto intended to bring once again into discussion the interventions in the historical center: how we build? where? on what basis do we intervene? and what do we introduce into the current situation? and especially how we relate to nature?
The uncertain juridical status and the situations of neglect in which some of the lands in the city center are found, transformed them into the ideal candidates for a program that address the problem of reconstruction. With a period of development composed between 1 - 5 years, the interventions on the proposed sites aims for provoking a vision, specific to each site in particular that can address each site’s potential.
Ailanthus Altissima (Cenuser) is a tree that can reach big heights, although the species can remain to reduce dimensions, depending on the existing geography. The Cenuser is the stray dog of plants from Bucharest.
The Manifesto Ailanthus Altissima it’s an unpretentious construction towards the envioremental conditions in which it grows, being extremly adaptive to the urban tissue, especially in the central area of the city. Taking into account this minimum requirements that had to be fulfield in order to survive, Ailanthus Altissima is a building that invades abandoned sites, managing to develop in places where not all buildings can develop and grow. The structure of the building is light, the ventilation and lighting are natural, increasing the comfort. The construction aims to be energetic independent from the city. The ideal place for this species to develop in the city of Bucharest is the Old City Center, because of the no man’s land spaces, de-structured areas and incoherent reconstruction process, it’s invading character contributing to the increasing of the multifunctional level that the area lacks right now. Ailanthus Altissima has several conceptual references, on one side the urban strategies of intervention by construction, historically tested, like belvedere type of constructions, turn into icons: Eiffel Tower Paris, Ferris Wheel London, Katarinahissen Lift Stocklom, etc, but also has on the other side a reference to the utopian reactive movements, like Archigram, Cedric Price, Yona Friedman, The Metabolists.
The Intervention has 2 components: a construction type Crane and a metallic structural Grid.
The main element, The Crane, acts also as main construction element - internal core of circulation, installations, energy distribution, but also as a mobile public space: it’s suspended arm caries the visitors over the nearby roofs suspended in a mobile cabin upon a horizontal circular track, giving a hedgehop perspective of the City Center.
The possibilities of supplying the structural Grid with programs are diverse, as position, shape, materials and also as life span. The result of the collaboration between the Crane and the Grid depends by the nature of the site the concept Ailanthus Altissima it inhabits, by the economic scenario in which the intervention is imagined or by the reactions that the intervention triggers.
The Crane is placed in the first phase of the intervention, in a classic way: transport and assembly by modules placed on a structural base. The second phase is that of the assembly of the Grid: the metallic structure is lifted by the Crane and connected to the central core. Then, Ailanthus Altissima is an organism that builds/re-builds itself, with an open end.
