In front of National Library, where Dâmboviţa makes a sudden turn and separates only then from the traffic lanes, we formulated a temporary narrative that aims to transform the edge of a canal into a river bed by an accumulation of installations and events that engage at a symbolic level the lost meaning of the water presence in the city.

The Triangles

Like the signaling sailing flags that hang from ship’s masts, we laid over the turn of the Dâmboviţa river, from one shore to the other three rows of triangles, as a form of maritime signals, but also as a reference to IACEBD fences painted with white and red triangles that were framing the grand demolition sites of 80’s Bucharest.

Written with messages collected on site, the white triangles are marking a temporary harbor, like a question and proposal area for the future and the character of the area, and of Dâmboviţa river, and about our relationship with the water.

Wood Workshop

For few days, a large team of volunteer architects left their computers at home and got their hands on the saws and on the paintbrushes, worked at heights and transformed cubic meters of wood into public use equipment.

The Lighthouse

Aiming to inject symbolic mythology into the river, we built on its edge a public structure associated with the water: a Lighthouse.

Raised on a generous promontory, a mysterious leftover made out of bulwarks, platforms and walls at the base of the National Library, the Lighthouse from the turn of the Dâmboviţa river has occupied a rather useless balcony and transformed it into a belvedere pavilion that framed a rare view: a Bucharest sunset, decorated in the background with the House of the People, and with Dâmboviţa river in the foreground zigzagged by plumps of ducks. During the night, the Lighthouse sent its rays into the dark, together with the headlights of the cars and the neon of the commercial signs.

Platform

Provoked and preoccupied by the lack of functional logic from the proximity of the access into the Lighthouse, we repaired a pedestrian link between the alleys of the Library and Unirii Boulevard.

We built a wooden platform at the intersection of the informal paths and a fence left from the working site, extending the existing alley, providing it with steps, handrail and resting place, all painted in red, as a section from a pedestrian crossing, a necessary link between the Dâmboviţa and the crossing over the Unirii Boulevard and the old neighborhood that survived demolitions behind the blocks of flats.

Archipelago - Islands for Dâmboviţa

On a Sunday morning, near the Lighthouse on the edge of the water, mixed teams of children and parents built small islands for the big Dâmboviţa: mysterious, with propeller, with sails, or with sweets, dinosaurs, and volcanoes, inhabited by billionaires, small serpents or rare birds.

All islands were launched on the water and we followed them from the bank as they went by. Even the second day, on the walk ‘Down by the River’ we found few beyond Timpuri Noi area.

Down by the River - From the Pond to the Delta

The next day we left early in the morning for a geographical hike through the present and past track of Dâmboviţa river, and in the former-future-lake-now-delta Văcăreşti.

Guided by architect Radu Ponta and landscape designer Mihai Culescu, we wandered on twisted streets, following the tracks of Dâmboviţa’s different old channels, we entered derelict factories, sleeping neighborhoods that still dreams about memories from a city crossed by a green river, until we left the city and we immersed into a habitat of ponds and groves: the delta with metro access, from the margins of Bucharest.

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