Walk on Mogoșoaiei Bridge. Proposal for cultural route

Calea Victoriei is not the longest street of Bucharest, neither the largest one. Certainly, is not the most circulated or the oldest street. However, you can’t think at Bucharest, without evoking, in your mind’s eye, a walk on Calea Victoriei, “the most famous artery from the Middle East”, like Paul Morand named it . What makes it to special, so attractive? How did Calea Victoriei enter the collective imagination, getting the present statute? What can we, the architects do, in order to maintain and increase its prestige?

The importance of regaining of “lost” public spaces of the city is more necessary as we confront with a period in which the technology is very present in all aspects of contemporary life. It seems that in an ideal digitalize word everything is handy, any need is one click away. On the other hand, we confront at urbanistic level with sensitive issues that architects have to deal with. The most cases which assume acute interventions to public spaces are referring to: low quality of public spaces, aesthetic, human scale, etc.

Is it necessary to return the beloved street of the people from Bucharest to (public) life or are we quietly waiting in front of the diagonal screens in a continuous growth to be the first consumers of culture and online public life, while from endless strings of cars, we are aware of the degradation of the public space of the Calea Victoriei street?