☉ Renovatio Communis is an academic project by Alin T. Stoica and Daniel T. Bortes for Ion Mincu University of Architecture in 2017. It is located in Bucharest Romania in a countryside and urban setting. Its scale is large. Key materials are concrete polycarbonate and wood.
The project brief consisted of a conversion on a half demolished pipe and train factory. The prefab concrete columns, metal trusses and broken skylights were the only original parts left of the factory.
Our approach was determined by an analitic study of the neighbourhood, necessary since the remaining factory is in a tensioned relation with its neighbouring buildings, that are on a different scale, low rise suburb houses that are fragmented in the urban structure.
Thus, our tendency towards the proposal was directly influenced by the vulnerable connection and harsh discrepancy of the site, bringing us to a sollution that would excerpt the monumental longitude of the construction, by fragmenting it perpendicular to its length through crossings, which also break the massivity; from muros to diaphanous.
The new structure relies and hangs on the existing one; its geometry is inspired by the former skylights, but it extends it until it connects to one another, forming modules and a domestic skyline against the small houses; its materiality is an antithesis on the existing industriality of the site, with wood being a catalyst of domestic spaces.
The covering facades and roof are composed of rudimentary corrugated polycarbonate sheets that are either translucent, transparent or opaque. These finishes translate throughout the functions of the spaces that populate the „sheds” creating a different typology of spaces only through the play of light and connection with the outside. It creates either lucent inside-outside spaces, blurred, filtered inside-outside spaces or sequenced inside-outside spaces.
At last, our projects philosophy consists in a domesticated industriality.