Project:
Colentina lakes competition

September 2024
Location: Sector 2, Bucharest, Romania
Client: Ordinul Arhitecților din România (OAR), Primaria Sector 2 Bucuresti
Competition: First prize in Lots 1, 2 and 3

Team: 
BEROS ABDUL ARHITECTI ASOCIATI 
Christian Beros, Esenghiul Abdul
PELINU PROJECTS SRL -  Laura Cristea, Raphael Zuber
Coautor: Maurus Schifferli 
Colaboratori arhitectură: Edyta Filipczak, Michał Starzyński, Erich Babă, Ana Brebeanu, Mădălina Dobre, Bianca Dumitru, Ana-Maria Marțiș, Raluca Mihăilă, Andreea Stah, Adi Bratu (visualisations)





Living waters - Ecological restoration of the lakes necklaces

Our starting point for this proposal is the water, and specifically the urban waters, as in the case of the “lakes necklace” in Bucharest.

This series of lakes that runs from the northwest to the southeast of the city represents not only an opportunity for the development of a pedestrian promenade for local users, but also the opportunity to build the city from the water, considering it a primordial and essential element of human life. It offers the chance to establish new linkages between disconnected urban fabrics and to highlight the importance of taking an ecological perspective when considering the cities of the future, especially under the constant threat of ongoing global warming.

The premise we established for this proposal is based on the need to focus on water as a limited resource. Without water, there is no border, and thus any future development opportunity falls into a void and loses all meaning. Today, the level of knowledge about urban waters in Bucharest is both minimal and uncertain. There are not enough scientific studies to inform us about the water quality, its flow control or about its management throughout the city, and we certainly know much less about whether we will be able to rely on this resource in the next 25 or 50 years. The majority of information is spread across various institutions, public and private organizations, with little to no intercoordination, and the detailed scientific studies are minimal or sectorial, in terms of hydrological engineering as well as about urban ecology and biodiversity.

With this question in mind, we decided to consider the urban border of the lakes from the perspective of the water itself and the need to protect it, and maintain it as a basic resource for the local ecology. From there, we devised three complementary strategies:

Cleaning and preserving

First, how to establish systems for filtering, and purifying the water, with the goal of obtaining water suitable for use as a leisure space and also as a basis for complex ecological systems that will help maintain and extend local biodiversity. In this sense we propose a series of systems to address the issue. Floating filtration islands working with local species to purify naturally the water. Enclosed natural areas, hoping to renaturalise full patches of the existing wetlands, and save them from future human intervention. Ancient water farming techniques, as the Chinampas which can provide different ecosystem services, particularly greenhouse gas sequestration and biodiversity diversification, as well as a high recreational potential.

Leisure activities

Second, the border itself, the meeting point between water and land, where the largest number of spaces, functions, and activities can be concentrated, seeking to activate the border and to build urban attractors that highlight an urban resource that the city has turned its back on. An exploratory path is proposed, having different stations with infrastructure for new leisure functions for the inhabitants. This strategy aims to engage the local community and to improve the local social and economical conditions of some of the neighbourhoods which are segregated from the city’s activities.

Cooling and CO2 capturing

Lastly, the nearby land, the green space adjacent to the “lakes necklace,” which needs to be enhanced, structured, and densified as a green-blue corridor throughout Bucharest. This corridors can have a significant effect in cooling the city and capturing CO2. The adjacent green areas are key to establish a more comprehensive approach to the city, where we need to consider green and blue resources not as a thin border line, but more as corridors and large patches of biodiversity which can be developed through renaturalisation strategies, increasing biodiversity and protecting the local ecology as a whole.

Following this definition, the proposal aims to give water a key role in the future development of Bucharest, reviving historical ideas from the interwar period when these lakes were envisioned as a space for leisure, navigation, and improving the quality of life of the inhabitants. Unfortunately, in the last 50 years, this vision has been abandoned.

The proposals presented here are a viewpoint from landscape architecture and from the development of cities through an urban ecology perspective. These proposals are ideas outlined for what we believe should be a long-term effort, ideas that would require technical work from engineering architecture, and especially from ecology studies, involving much more complex analyses beyond the scope of this competition.

However, we believe these are concepts that need to be discussed, confronted, and applied in order to think about how Bucharest can project itself into a complex future in the face of global warming, climate change, and the increasing scarcity of the resource in question—water.


    ©Beros Abdul 2025