LACUL MORII PARK
Participating in the "Lacul Morii Park" design competition was a significant experience for our team, challenging us to expand our creative and technical capabilities. It gave us the opportunity to engage with an impactful urban project, propose innovative design solutions, and contribute ideas for enhancing public spaces.
The key to the project is redefining Lacul Morii as an urban binding pole because it can integrate at the same time ecological features (biodiversity and natural resources) with social and cultural facilities (sports on land and on the water, potential for cultural as well as recreational activities) in a manner that can lead to urban regeneration.
General Information
+| Location: | Bucharest |
| Year: | 2022 |
| Status: | competition |
Project Team
+| Architects: | arch. Monica Crețu, arch. Sergiu-Dorian Leucă, arch. Alexandru-Ștefan Vasiliu, arch. Radu Constantin, arch. Adelina-Ștefania Popa |
| Renders: | arch. Radu Constantin |
| Structural engineering: | eng. Ovidiu Chițu |
| Landscape design consultant: | eng. Sorin Ciorapciu |
What first strikes the attention when analyzing the Lacul Morii site and adjacent neighborhoods is the lack of homogeneity and coherence, given the chaotic development history as an urban palimpsest, with alternating zoning politics and interventions that were incompatible from a scale and functionality point of view. More specific, the hydrological development that created Lacul Morii felt more like an urban fracture, given the brutality and scale of the intervention regarding the pre-existing urban tissue. Around the lake, the city continued to develop in an incoherent manner and at the time being Lacul Morii and its embankment works like a gigantic negative space in the urban composition, even after a series of smaller scale interventions.
AREA 1 - THE PROTECTOR
Transit area, designed as a sound barrier protecting the park from nearby traffic through its heavy plantation. The proposed bridge closes the circuit and ensures perimetral continuity both by feet and by bicycle.
AREA 2 - THE GATE
Main access point from the city, it merges with Crângași Park to create a diffuse transition from the traditional park layout to the intervention area. Paving and green spaces intertwine to create a hybrid surface, suited both for occasional car traffic and parking and for pedestrian use.
AREA 3A - COMMUNITY GENERATOR
This project area is situated near the high-rise collective housing, so it encourages slowness and silence by reducing new interventions to a bare minimum - small seating areas, projections spaces and playgrounds, enabling social interaction amongst inhabitants of all ages.
AREA 3B - THE DYNAMIC POLE
Its closeness to the industrial area automatically gives it both a transitory and a very dynamic character. The dialogue of the sinuous pedestrian and bicycle paths creates a number of activities clusters. The area boasts a variety of sports activities, seating areas, meditation pods, playgrounds, a public cafe, lockers, and toilets under the elevated football pitch. It is the only area where the bicycle lane is detached from the green slope, creating the possibility of multiple interactions with it.
AREA 3C - CONNECTING THE NEIGHBORHOOD
The urban plaza in the junction between 3B and 3C marks the passage to another slow and silent area in which the main intervention is the addition of parking spaces that relieve visitors of the stress of parking their cars in inappropriate spaces.
AREA 4 - THE HEART
An initially bland plateau becomes the focal point of the entire project. Through the simple gesture of rising the ground towards the existing monument, an urban piazza takes life. It concentrates a variety of spaces and activities, from public alimentation, educational and art facilities, to bicycle rental spaces, toilets, and lockers. By eliminating the old parapets, the artesian fountain becomes a simple and elegant leisure water fountain, allowing visitors to experience the play with water. The south-east slopes host sunbathing platforms and open-air bleachers. During winter, the slopes become a real winter sports park, thus enabling visitors to enjoy the space all year round. A new, large-scale jetty is created near the newly inserted coastguard office to enhance the experience of water sports for the larger public, while the old jetty focuses its use for professional kayak-canoe practice.
AREA 5 - THE MEADOW
The proposal intentionally extends the intervention area in order to accommodate the PUZ configuration. The choice was to create a large and diverse meadow, split by vegetal pedestrian trails.
AREA 6 - WILD TRAILS
The walkway was designed to enable a future connection to the wetland. The intervention remains minimal as intensive planting could harm the embankment. The meadow character is being continued, similar to Area 5.
AREA 7 - WETLAND EXPLORATION
The wetland park intervention consists of minimal gestures - a light network of wooden suspended trails which connect Area 6 to the adjacent urban tissue and a series of birdwatching towers and hives. These simple gestures create an ever-changing journey through an exceptionally wild area in Bucharest, second only to the Văcărești Natural Park.
AREA 8 - CLOSING THE CIRCLE
The goal of the intervention was to close the pedestrian and bicycle circuit on the entire Lacul Morii Park perimeter. It can become the host of biking competitions, marathons etc.
View from AREA 3B
View from the main plaza in AREA 4
View from the main plaza in AREA 4 - Christmas setting
APPROACH PRINCIPLES
The proposal revolves around three primary intentions:
▨ redefining Lacul Morii Park as part of the public parks and gardens system of Bucharest by integrating specific functions and facilities
▨ reconnecting the park with the adjacent urban tissue, by redesigning the access points and introducing new pedestrian paths between different areas
▨ revalorizing the context by ensuring the optimal balance of interaction and impact on the natural environment