Bucharest / COSMOPOLIS
We need nature in our cities more than anywhere else.
— John Goldwyn
1 / PROJECT BACKGROUND
This is a project that started out as a relatively conventional master planning brief - a combination of linked public spaces and tree-lined boulevards for an urban development project in Bucharest, Romania.
What attracted me to the project was the record of the developers, Cosmopolis, who had for the past 20 years created several Lifestyle Hub communities focusing on creating highly affordable, exceptionally well-designed living environments and real estate for young families.
Considerations like cycle networks and natural features had always characterised their developments, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with developers with a shared belief in the importance of creating attractive, inter-connected public spaces and boulevards.
However, within just a few weeks of working on site in Bucharest, the scope of the project radically expanded into an architectural design brief that I had always hoped to land - the chance to bring high style and beautiful modern eco-design to a property development built to a budget that is focused on affordability.
2 / APPROACH AND VISION
The Cosmopolis 2 site is a truly picturesque location. The beautiful River Pasarea flows through the site and Bucharest itself is an exciting up and coming city with a tangible sense of energy within it.
Studio Wild15 spent a week on site, and in the process, started sketching an urban landscape populated with beautiful trees, linked spaces and road designs which would create safe spaces for pedestrians and children to play outdoors, whilst managing the flow and speed of cars through careful measures.
From the start, our grand ambition was working out how to apply the principles that we would use in a typical 5 Star eco-hotel to a project that’s far more utilitarian and public in its nature. After all, who wouldn’t want to live in a community that felt like a luxury resort in many ways?
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So what does that mean?
It means beautiful landscape and open space. It means creating incredible linked spaces which meant you could walk from one side of the site to the other without having to cross any roads. An environment where you can slow down and embrace your surroundings.
It was in the process of putting together some sketch visuals, that we thought about an architectural evolution of affordable luxury-style residential units which we called “Townhouse Villas”. These were sketched to demonstrate what would fit, aesthetically, with the spaces we were creating. To our great surprise and delight, our clients liked these ‘Townhouses Villas’ so much, we went from master planning to townhouse architects in the space of this single meeting!
In addition, we were also commissioned to design the interior spaces of the Townhouse Villas and hotel on the site: a Marriott Residence Inn.
This is Marriott’s long stay product which is marketed as a home from home, and our challenge was to deliver something that felt very much like an urban extension of the development, but also within enough distinctiveness in the detail and design ideas to make it stand out within the estate.
Materiality has been very much at the forefront of our design thinking on this project. Indeed, many Studio Wild15 projects feature my signature obsession with continuity, from the exterior to the interior, the river to the land, and here we have used a technical stone material that continues from the exterior right into the guest room interior.
3 / ASSEMBLING WORLD CLASS TALENT
LAURA MORALES
Interior Architect
has been key to the ever expanding scope of this project. She is a world class designer of both exterior and interior concept design, with an eye for the potential to create beautiful and memorable ideas in the most granular details, which complements my broader brush and mood design perspective very well.
Laura brings that high style approach from her Foster+Partners experience, which was highly valued with her interior concepts for the Marriott Residence. However she didn’t just reserve that for the hotel, but also brought this quality of design thinking, modelling and visualisation to the Townhouse Villa concepts we presented. It’s a good example of that simultaneous, collaborative design approach in action and I’m absolutely confident it is what has led us to create such an astonishing holistic design solution within the budget we have available.
AARON MINSON & KIRSTY RUTHERFORD
Master Planners & Landscape Architects
Aaron is someone I’ve had the privilege to work with for over two decades. He brings an extraordinary level of design flair with the innovative application of technology, two distinct and highly valuable skills rarely found in just one individual!
It’s enabled us to rapidly integrate a lot of new software that other practices still don’t use. It means that we can provide visualisation capabilities that few others can match, such as our use of VR on site to enable our clients to fully understand the site features. He has an absolute passion for accuracy which is achievable to extreme levels thanks to his skill and passion for the detail of geo-location. Inaccuracy costs time and money, and his work on visualising topography in three dimensions for example, that is millimetre accurate, has made him both highly respected but also appreciated.
Aaron also reconnected me to Kirsty Rutherford (an extremely talented landscape designer and long time collaborator) via our virtual studio that has now gone global. Kirsty assists with the illustrative plans and brings an attention to ecological detail that seems intrinsic to her being a New Zealander, living in a wilderness!
HAKU
Computational Designer
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Another core member of this group, who has been helping to model our ideas parametrically. She works on the design, modelling and visualisation for the townhouses using Rhino and Grasshopper (a piece of computational design software that isn’t standard outside of academia or theoretical projects). We use this rather than the traditional plan section elevation projection because it offers an exponentially superior level of technical detail. Her technical skills are exceptional, not only in computational design software but also procedural design. Procedural design is an approach that deviates from standard architectural orthogonal projection, but we embrace it at Studio Wild15 because we are convinced of its superiority for rapid iteration.
4 / INSPIRING POSITIVE SUSTAINABILITY
Creating the environment to encourage Romanians out of their beloved cars was the defining factor for Cosmopolis’ sustainable agenda. We have created a network of attractive greenways to ensure that cars become the last option, rather than the first. With our range of cycle routes, walking trails and shared surfaces we have made the public realm truly exceptional.
At the heart of this commitment to the sustainability of Cosmopolis 2 is our firm belief that we need nature in our cities more than we do in resorts.
Many more people get to benefit from sustainable design in a city rather than an exclusive resort. In the case of this project, we have been able to apply the principles of biophilic design to an affordable housing development and proven that it can be achieved without the need for an ultra-high end luxury budget.
5 / PROJECT STATUS (as of February 2024)
We have delivered the concepts for the townhouses and are currently finalising the hotel concept, and the master plan simultaneously. The plan will mean 3000 new residential units on the entire development site.