Street Delivery Bucharest – Shared spaces | 15 – 17 September 2023
This year’s edition of Street Delivery Bucharest is closing the street to cars and opening it up to people (and unicorns)!
Street Delivery Bucharest returns after the pandemic period on Pictor Arthur Verona Street, on the weekend of September 15-17. The 18th edition is about the restoration of the role of the street as a public space and transitioning from festival to public policy.
In addition, the organizers are preparing a short moment of magic: on the night of Saturday, September 16, for 15 minutes, between 22:00 – 22:15: the crossing of Magheru Boulevard in the footsteps of the pedestrian crossing abolished in the 70s – a crossing symbolic, reconnection of the fragments of Arthur Verona Street, a reweaving, as if in a blink of an eye, of the Icon area with the Athenaeum area.
Note: The crossing will be controlled and timed under the guidance of the police crew from the Bucharest Brigade. Participants in the crossing must wear reflective vests, move in groups and be accompanied by volunteers.
Street Delivery 2023 – Shared Spaces
Because the organizers want sustainable and inclusive cities because public space cannot only belong to the driver, this year they have chosen Shared Spaces as their working theme. For three days, they will give back public space to pedestrians, children, cyclists and all people who want to live, not just transit the city. Thus, Arthur Verona Street will become a habitable model where attendants will discover how to build their future in a city for people, not just cars.
In 17 years of recurrence, the Street Delivery festival and Arthur Verona Street were joined by various other similar events – Strada Armeneasca (2014-2019), Block Party on I.L. Caragiale (2018, 2019), Women on Silks, Men on Silks, Via Sport, Urban Promenade on Calea Victoriei (2018 – 2019), Open Streets (2020 – 2023). However, temporary pedestrianization is legislatively classified as an event/festival and not seen as a tool of urban planning or urban policy of public space management. We have invited professionals from the field, public administration, civil society and investors to the public debates within Street Delivery because it is necessary to discuss together, in the open and democratic framework of the street, how we govern our city for the common good: How much (we) cost city disappearances? and How much does heritage cost (us)?
Maria Duda, architect. We open the city, curated by Street Delivery 2023
Friday, September 15. How much do the city’s disappearances cost (us)?
The debate addresses awareness of the cost of disappearances from public, green, pedestrian spaces, the urban plinth, and built landmarks. A living city is a city that plans its development, weighing and negotiating decisions based on the importance of the common good.
Saturday, September 16. How much does heritage cost (us)?
The question asked on the festival’s second day focuses on balancing the standard costs of heritage loss through destruction, abandonment, and misplaced good intentions, ignoring risks and individual costs of the maintenance, conservation, restoration, and functionalization of historical and heritage buildings.
We chose to open at Street Delivery 2023 – Shared Spaces, those common spaces that form the agora and the deep tissues of our society, projects and concepts that answer simple questions of people on the street about the quality of life in the city — together, not separately. We have invited civic initiative groups, energy communities, peace organizations, social workers, urban planners and architects who see people first, buildings second, climate, nature and human rights activists, musicians and street artists, and everyone who believes in love, not war.
Cristian Neagoe, co-founder of Street Delivery
Selected projects at the Street Delivery Bucharest
10 ideas that illustrate social, cultural, architectural, urban, ecological or identity aspects of the street space have been selected for the festival.
Cage – the experimental facility of the Legal Resources Center
No man’s land in the heart of the city – a project of the Icoanei-Ioanid Civic Initiative Group
We reclaim the street through the collective art – installation Alternative Bucharest & Săfițicuminți
Civic Design Lab: Our City, Our Solutions – workshop designed by Marinela Rață – Panaite
Neighbours with wings. Discover the wild birds of Bucharest – a project proposed by the Romanian Ornithological Society
Plastic Comics Cube – street art project proposed by artists Maria Bălan & Robert Obert
Transparency in images: Gallery of requests and responses in access to public information – proposed by the Corruption Kills Association
All for the endorphins. Contemporary movement and dance pop-up workshops – supported by the Bucharest National Dance Center
Reading and creative workshops for children – supported by the Dandelion Workshop
The Harmony of Nature: Connecting with the nature in the urban tumult – installation proposed by the artist Andr0meda / Andra Bularca
Among the invited projects, we mention the „Performative Walks” laboratories of Developing Art and „Street Delivery in motion” supported by Areal | space for choreographic development, which approaches the intersection between the body and the city through contemporary dance, but also the discussions around the built heritage – about the seismic vulnerability of spaces and buildings in Bucharest together with the Re:Rise team and about alerting tools against aggressive interventions on the Bucharest heritage within the 112 Patrimoniu platform (a tool developed by the Working Group of the Order of Bucharest Architects). Added to these are the „Ursu Memorial” exhibitions at the ARO Block (Re:Rise) and the „Good Practices Exhibition – reliefs and associated historical studies” at the Mincu house.
The Romanian Order of Architects has supported Street Delivery for 18 years as a strategic project to democratize public space. Opening the streets to people paves the way for livable cities, and access to quality public spaces is a civil right that the event claims. OAR recognizes that architecture is as much about the object as it is about unbuilt spaces and supports the encounters between actors necessary for systemic change.
Romanian Order of Architects – Street Delivery co-organizer
On Saturday, the French Institute and the Embassy of the Lebanese Republic will be the cultural partners who have chosen to open their doors to celebrate the public space with guided tours and narrated histories, film screenings, dances and traditional food.
Street Delivery Bucharest is organized by the Cărturești Foundation and the Romanian Order of Architects, OAR strategic project financed by #TimbruDeArchitectura. Street Delivery Bucharest – Shared Spaces is an event curated by BAZA. We open the city.
Food area at Street Delivery Festival Bucharest
Attendants can fully enjoy SHARED SPACES with delicious dishes from 𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐃 AREA – Arepas Colombianas Bucharest, IndiVan Food Truck, PhoBar, Burger van, Crăpelniță, Mixology, The Cone, Wacko Lab, Prossesco Ride and Prosecco Bar.
So, the festival is not only about delivering the street back to the residents but also about delivering food to the hungry attendants running all day long searching for independent and creative art.
The official program of the Street Delivery Bucharest (in Romanian)
