Iris Cîrlan

Focusing on the sidewalks occupied by parked cars, Step Down, Step Aside, Step Into examines how urban space is claimed and reorganized in Bucharest. The sidewalks of the city provide testimony to how the automobile came to represent freedom, individual mobility, aspiration, and social status within the post-socialist city. As public space got increasingly aligned to the needs of the car, pedestrian movement is redirected, compressed, and pushed aside. The project follows the daily negotiation at the human body scale, tracing how spatial hierarchies are physically experienced in everyday life. Walking becomes the project’s mean of observation and confrontation, embodying how moving along the sidewalk is a series of adjustments, influencing people’s paths and spatial presence in the city. Prompted walkscapes by residents are translated into texts, drawings, photographs, maps, and visual notations that trace rhythm, hesitation, and deviation. From these translations, a collection of sidewalk manuals for the city is created, becoming both witness and guide for the continuous negotiation of urban space.