Ciprian Porumbescu
Concurs: Redesign of public space around the statue of Ciprian Porumbescu in Gh. Dima park
Team: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Radu Leşevschi
Location: Brasov, Romania
Year: 2011
Stopover at a crossroad
The tools and strategies of the traditional urban design treats the contemporary public spaces just as products of marketing and pr. In these controlled settings are consumed standardized attitudes and public behaviors. What kind of alternatives we have to this gradual and monotonous transformation? And how can we reconquer the city and it’s territory for a culture of diversity, a space of collectivity and debate? The intervention engages the existent conflicts and activates the emergent public potential, whithout making the place just a showroom of public furniture. We propose the gradual transformation of an uncertain and anonymous area into a crossroad: a territory for experiment, a focal point, an open space, generator of interaction.
Camille Pissarro - Parc a Pontoise, 1873
Rhythm
The logic of the intervention works around the idea of the rhythm, by recording the pace of the everyday, tag by turning functional the footpaths on the ground. The use of railway tracks is an expression of the tradition and culture of the wood, but also brings the music of progress spread by the railway into the world of the end of 19 century, as a reference to the composer Ciprian Porumbescu’s work, where tradition and modernity are in dialog. In a similar fashion, the rhythm is the motif of the other elements: the street lamp is synchronized with the moon phases, and the metallic platform is reacting to the rhythm of the city - support for fares, events, concerts.
Claude Monet - Gare St. Lazare, 1877
Intervention as a Narrative
The proposal starts from the premise of a prior existence of a tissue of organizational forces and strategies of any urban space. Thereby, the intervention is constructed gradually, as a narrative about the emergent character of a place, amplifying, balancing or qualifying the as found behaviors.
Location
The study area is a diffuse territory where different directions are crossing. Neither park nor public square, neither stopover nor destination, near to an intersection and located to the park entrance, the space has an uncertain and peripheral status. The logic of function is determined by external factors: the junction, the pedestrian crossings, the playground, the water pump, the high school, the old town. The placement of the statue of Ciprian Porumbescu in this context doesn’t manage to qualify the space around.
Informal
The traces of the daily crossings are accumulating in a few rides that are answering the need of cutting across the area. Daily beaten, the tracks are cut out from the existing layers of grass and pebbles. We take the temporary-but-permanent character of the tracks as a resource in the intervention strategy.
Directions
Two major distinct directions of use are visible, together with their bends: the one that links the main alley of the park from the Andrei Saguna College to the crossing towards Cibinului Street, and the one that links the playground (enclosed by a fence now) to the crossing towards the Gh. Baritiu street and the direction towards the old city center. We are enforcing the emergent directions of spatial use by placing along them urban furniture, raising the functional profile of the place. Marking the directions is done along the limit between the soft paths and grass or existing pebbles.
Plan
Section
Section
Diagonals
Textures
Temporary Event - Fair
Temporary Event - Concert
Proposal
Wooden Crossbeams
To highlight the diagonal paths and to raise the sitting places we use wooden crossbeams realized for railway tracks. Prefabricated elements, with standard dimensions, the crossbeams are made out of hard essence wood (31100 - Fagus sylvatica or Quercus spp) and are ingrain in vacuum pressure oil (antiseptic oily) with Creosote type C, substance that assures protection against fungus, bugs, moisture and it raises the period of use.
Vegetation
The intervention in the vegetation layer is minimal and it borrows local strategies of adapting to the context: the grass and the bear’s bed penetrates the wooden crossbeams, and the tall grass bedded in at the beginning in distinct areas will gradually migrates in the rest of the space, making random layouts.
Existent Textures
Tall Grass
Wooden Crossbeams and grass
Statue - Plinth
By amplifying the existing tendencies - the use of the base of the statue as sitting place - we take the plinth of the statue functional. The plinth becomes thereby a support structure not just for the statue of the composer, but also for the public life. The platform around the statue function as a focal point in the are: stage for event, or relaxing area, or as stand for temporary fair. The relation between the platform, the alleys and the benches qualifies the space into event and audience, making a reference to the composer Ciprian Porumbescu.
Statue - Pedestal
The vertical pedestal of the statue is draped in a new cloak, lay-ed on top of the existing travertine, and made out of the letters of ‘Crai Nou’, cutout from a steel plate.
Lighting
Just one street lamp is located diagonal of the statue of Ciprian Porumbescu, near the main alley of the park. The lamp is working after a strict schedule, related with the phases of the moon. The intensity of the light is triggered by the moon’s phases, but as a compensation with it: the light intensity is maxim when is new moon and minim when is full moon, making a gradient of intensity along the period of moon’s transition. Working as a barometer of moon’s intensity, the lamp is a reference to Ciprian Porumbescu’s work, ‘Crai Nou’.
Moon Clock
The 4 projectors are lighting up following an algorithm related to the moon’s phases.
Initiator
The writing of the logo of the initiator of the competition is burned on the wooden beams.
Reversibility
The intervention has a temporary-but-permanent character, all the proposals being reversible, also as a measure to adjust the investment for the future redesign of the big park, but also as a critical position towards the ‘all to definitive’ character of the traditional public spaces transformed into territories reluctant to change, cutout from it’s users and from daily life. The platform and the metallic pedestal are lay-ed around the statue without affecting the existing pedestal of the statue. The wooden crossbeams are transforming by being conquered by grass and bear’s bed, and are easy to reuse grace to the system of metallic fittings. The street lamp and the statue’s platform are made of metal tubes and metal plates that are easy to dismantle and reuse.