Living in Common Courtyards - Two Morphological and Spatial Hypostases. Contemporary Interventions in a Historic Minor Fabric

The following article is based on two themes of the Second Year of Study, “Path and Exteriority (1st semester) and “A cluster of Houses” (2nd semester) and the teaching methods used by the authors in the Design Studio 22, Basics of Architectural Design Department, Faculty of Architecture, UAUIM, 2021-2022 academic year. The paper explores the dwelling in shared courtyards, considering two distinct morphological and spatial hypostases; the goal was to understand how the identity of pre-existing historical fabric can influence the spatial and volumetric characteristics of students’ architectural interventions.

The text is structured on three levels. A theoretical level, centered on the shared courtyards typology, a trademark of Bucharest, where a comparative study was conducted, analyzing two types of fabric: the designed, planned one respectively the other, organically developed. The second level is a pedagogical one in which we explained our teaching approach which consists of dissecting different semantic layers, documenting and comprehending the processes that shaped the built reality. Finally, the third level is where we examine how various observations from urban readings and analyses manifest in the architectural proposals of our students.

The authors emphasize the importance of discussing lessons derived from studying the evolution of urban spaces over time with specific morpho-typological features, beyond the intricate relationships inherent in housing patterns, and the delicate balance between built and unbuilt areas, collective and individual spaces, and public and private realms.

The city, shaped by historical constraints rather than ideals, sees new structures rising atop older ones, each dictating a specific spatial configuration. In the architectural proposals, the establishment of the premises and the internal design mechanisms of the presented projects were driven by the preliminary urban reading as an essential element in understanding the pre-existing-built environment, the continuation of the particular features acquired over time and the respect for the identity of the pre-existing historical fabric.