An abandoned soviet hotel in the middle of Chisinau - the capital city of the Republic of Moldova - is being put under heritage protection after 15 years of demolition plans. While a welcome decision - the building being one of the most important examples of Soviet modernist architecture in the country - there is no vision for the future of the building. The project picks up the current physical, legal, and political situation of the hotel and - by comparing it to the current struggles of the country in the search for identity after the independence - proposes a vision where the society can come together and unite around. The project doesn’t provide a definitive solution - as the future is currently too uncertain - but rather lays the first strategic stone for a process that is to develop.

This first step provides an architectural solution for the ground level of the building ensemble and the free space around - the part of the project that interacts directly with the city. It addresses the urban scale and the suffocating illegal densifications and privatizations of the last 30 years, by proposing to de-densify and create a new public space. It addresses the legal scale of heritage protection, balancing between protecting as little as possible but as much as needed. It also provides an economic model where public interest can be supported by private interests, combined with a model of shared land-use. And it picks up the local still existing tradition of claca - the tradition of voluntarily building, planting, and working together for a common goal - in order to create a new collective identity and overcome the divisive memories of the past - exemplified in the choice of materials that can be produced collectively.

Above all the project is a continuous autobiographical work and search for what one wants to pack together to bring with them when arriving back home, thus meandering between knowledge gathered in Germany and Switzerland and the specificity of the Moldovan context, with an accent on value and care for the existing. For more information on the project click here