A Diploma Journey

A city is more than the sum of its physical spaces; it is a re-pository of individual and collective memory. As Italo Calvino beautifully stated, a city consists of “the relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past”. Infused with our emotions and experiences, the spaces we live in become the places of our existence. Endowed with meaning, these locis are where our lives, social relationships and cultural practices are rooted. Based on a theoretical concept belonging to Professor Augustin Ioan -, a term that refers to those sites that already contain heritage information about their past, unfortunately hidden in the present and still waiting to be retold, we initiated, for the UAUIM Diploma Session 2024, a collective student research project that recalls an area of the former Jewish quarter of Bucharest. Starting from the memory of the sites and the generative element of the study - the Beth Hamidras Synagogue - the project proposes an urban intervention that brings together a series of buildings (mostly architectural monuments located along Calea Moșilor) in a possible pedestrian route that will reactivate the Jewish quarter and that will today host functions appropriate for such a central area. Given the advanced state of disrepair of the buildings, the project starts with their restoration and also proposes a series of architectural interventions that will integrate them into the socio-cultural context of the city. The pedestrian route, detailed by specific morphological elements, will be the main element to coagulate the public interest in the area. The paper will focus on our one-year research journey, from the first moments spent on-site to the final Diploma Project defense (July 2024). Our architectural experience is described as an emotional and thought-provoking process that we went through together—tutor and students—not only to rehabilitate a part of Bucharest’s heritage but also to unveil its hidden, silent memory.