Content

The art of creating spaces,

I. A short selective history of forms, structures
and conceptions of European town planning, 8
■ The old history, 8

■ "The traditional town", 11

■ The 19th century: the interface, 15

■ Modernism, 20

II. The Critique of Modernism and of the After War, 26

III. The Contemporary City, 34
IV. Bucharest, 39
V. "Europe and the Architecture Tomorrow", 54
Bibliography, 56

5
6
 The Art of Creating Spaces

All spaces, small or big, interior or exterior, opened or closed, with more or less
permissive limits etc., are object of creation, aiming to transform them into existential
environments of increased quality. Creating environments means organizing living
spaces as functional and agreeable places to live in. Speaking about urban spaces,
creating them means composing a structure of built forms and free spaces, while
considering all sort of historical, psychological, functional, spiritual and physical
relations (between forms, light and colours etc.) Above all, we have to consider the main
users of that certain space.
All this is mainly the task of the architect; though in most cases today he needs
the contribution of other professionals, such as engineers, economists, sociologists etc.
In order to obtain a built space of high quality, one must solve a lot of concrete problems
of technical, functional and economic order. The greatest difficulty however, consists in
creating a particular character and atmosphere at each unique space, which also are
appropriate to that particular place. All these tasks require specific knowledge, but in
order to create aesthetical values and to manipulate cultural values, they require talent
and cultural education as well.
Architects have to tackle different attitudes in case of small, individual spaces
than in public spaces. In principle, for simplification, we can speak about three main
types of space: the interior space - a covered, limited space; the architectural space -
when an edifice is in question and the urban space - speaking of settlements. The three
types of approach are different, because from particular to common there is a difference
between the three types of users. An essential difference of approach exists in the degree
of artistic imagination the conceiver is permitted to develop.
The architectural or interior design object allows artistic liberties that urban
space usually doesn't. It is because, under given circumstances, the individual
architectural object is legitimated to be a masterpiece of art, even an avant-gardist one
looking for originality and aesthetical progress. This is just an object among others, that
mustn't necessarily be accepted by any person, never mind to what educational degree.
Compared to that unique object, urban space as existential environment of a
community isn't allowed to ignore the average receptive capacity of the public; the
former has by definition a limited capacity of facing technology, aesthetics and the new
spirit. This is a fact creators of spaces must accept. In other words, they have to consider
the social adequacy as well as the cultural adequacy.
Therefore, while houses have the right to exist even when rejected at the first
glance by ordinary people and accepted only by a few educated persons, the town has to
be enjoyed from the beginning by almost everybody. It is thus not allowed to be subject
to extreme artistic experiences. Town planners do make concessions to the public: to
some of its acceptable mentalities, habits, values, memories etc. They act as filters that
return these values back to society under different contemporary shapes. Therefore, in
order to be accepted, public spaces and the values they express have to be at least
partially understandable to the spontaneous lecture of the masses. Thus they can be
finally enjoyed. Though urban spaces do not have only common symbols and local
cultural meanings, but also new aesthetical meanings expressed in a contemporary
language. To find the right balance between the two is not an easy task. Anyway, for
protecting an innocent society from shocks, urban planning has to rely on
interdisciplinary work, consisting among others of sociology, psychology, philosophy,
visual arts etc.

7
 I. A short selective history of forms, structures
and conceptions of town planning in Europe
Conceiving the town means studying the different aspects of its life, following a
lot of criteria. A multi criteria analysis usually contains studies on:
▪ the morphological composition of the settlement or of the researched area - the density
of forms, their dimensions, proportions, disposition, the relation between forms,
between built forms and free spaces, the impact of the images, the silhouette of the town
etc.
▪ the functional structure - the distribution and the dimensions of the functional domains
▪ the functional infrastructure or "the equipment"- the distribution of administration
buildings, stations, ministries, commercial services, schools, hospitals...
▪ the demographical structure
▪ the historical heritage
▪ the relation between old and new
▪ the relation between public and private spaces
▪ the landscape dimension – the quality and quantity of green spaces
▪ the technical infrastructure - water and gas supply, sewerage, electricity...
▪ the integrated traffic system
▪ the town’s geography, the vertical systematisation etc.
We shall focus further on the first point, proposing a critical study of the urban
forms and structures in Europe.

■ The old history

Spontaneous establishments were the first forms of human habitation. They
were unorganised agglomerations of huts having the proximity as single constitutive
feature. The establishments were usually surrounded by retaining earth walls or built
defence walls. A primitive structure appeared with the alignment of houses and farms,
which made them accessible from the same path. Later on, when the social position
began to differentiate the families, the hierarchic criteria dictated the location of the
richer farms - mainly the leader's one - related to the others.
On the contrary, the sanctuary had already during the archaic times a favourite
position, separated from ordinary yards. It was in shaping the sanctuaries that the first
forms of abstract thinking developed as geometrical order of space.
Catal Hüyük., 7th mill. BC Kirokitia – Cyprus, 6th mill. BC

8
 During the epochs of the old despotic kingdoms of the ancient Orient, the
complexes of temples and the kingly palace were huge isolated ensembles that
dominated the town horizontally as well as vertically. The mass dwelling areas appeared
in contrast, as a compact but amorphous tissue with small loops. Actually, ordinary
habitation will evolve everywhere in Europe until Modernism as integrated architecture
within different types of rather compact tissues.

Hafăğa, Mesopotamia, 2600-2500 BC. The Stonehenge ensemble. The

The big temple was separated from the geometrical range of the
common residential area due to its megalithic masses defines the
position, its dimensions and even by space.
double walls.

Preconceived urban planning appeared therefore within religious programs. It

was later extended to complex aristocratic residences and comprised finally whole
towns. It was increasingly promoted, as more submitted to orthogonal geometry.
The antique world. Some of the first preconceived settlements appeared in
Greece. Priene was a city that possessed already in the 4th century B.C. a regular,
orthogonal grid of streets. The area between the streets, divided into lots, was to be later
called insulae.

Priene, 4th century B.C.

The sides of the plots measured
47,20 x 35,40 meters.

9
 Miletos, a city in Minor Asia was systematised around 479 B.C. by the
Greek Hippodamos of Miletos. He reinvented and improved by this occasion the
rectangular system of streets' network, only this time with square insulae and equally
wide streets of the same rank. This town planning principle has later been called the
hippodamical network.

Miletos, 479 B.C. The two

residential "districts" of Miletos
reflect the ideological conception
of the epoch: to people of the same
social condition to be offered equal
living conditions.

Although the average Greek town was organised rather according to symbolic
meanings and natural conditions than according to formal lows, three groups of
functions occupied the main positions within town’s geographical space, according to
the prestige they occupied in Greek mentality: 1. the sanctuary, a place where
community joined its deities, was placed on the highest positions - mountain slopes or
hill peaks; in the last case they were called acropolis; 2. the agora, a place dedicated to
social contacts between citizen of the same polis, had a privileged position as well, only
of second order; 3. ordinary mass housing, which appeared - from urban as well as
symbolic perspective - rather as a background for the first two public spaces.
The Romans remained in humankind's memory as gifted space organisers.
They were the first great constructors of territorial scale: they built roads for connecting
Rome not only to other big cities but also to the most remote provinces of the empire;
they erected impressing bridges and viaducts for facilitating the communication.
The Romans set up a lot of new towns, introducing an original method of
defining the space: they firstly did not trace its perimeter, but fixed its centre by tracing
two perpendicular axes - the cardo, from north to south and the decumanus. The forum,
as well as other important public edifices, was usually located at this crossroad. Except
the town's core where major public spaces and main institutions were hosted, a
homogeneous tissue of mass buildings and an orthogonal street network covered the
city. Big gates at the ends of the two main streets were the town's access points.

10
 During the Roman antiquity, many existing settlements were submitted to big
town planning and technical public works, everywhere it was possible: regularization of
the network, enlargement of the roads etc.

The town plan of Timgad, from

Calleva Atrebatium was a tribal centre in
Britain, which was restructured by the
Romans during 90-170. The rectangular
network of the streets is superposed to the
disordered structure of the pre existing
settlement.
the beginning of the 2nd
century, presents a
preconceived city with a square
form and a hippodamic
structure. The quality of the
streets equipment and of the
sewerage system is astonishing.

Roman towns and villages remained scattered all over the old-Christian
Europe. During this epoch, the great abbeys were almost as important as those - at least
from religious, cultural and educational point of view. They were located "extra muros",
even far away from town, sometimes along the pilgrim ways, in which case the abbeys
were important territorial points.

■ "The Traditional Town"

The medieval town is a milestone when referring to the traditional pattern of
the European town compared to the Modern 20th century universal city. Contemporary
critique of the Modernist town planning takes it as an example when it comes to town
images, the hierarchy of forms promoting cultural values, and finally even social life
influenced by the towns' character.
As in practically all the pre industrial towns, buildings accommodating both
ordinary dwellings and usual services - shops and workshops - created at urban level a
homogenous fabric. The density of the buildings was big, because the fortified walls
surrounding the settlement hindered its extension. A big diversity of forms designed the
towns' shape, while their structure was either irregular - in case the towns were
spontaneously new born, or regular having an orthogonal network - in case the town
developed upon Roman ruins. Strait or sinuous streets displayed a row of attached
facades advancing towards the big central square. The lots were narrow and deep,
making lighting courts vital. By the way, we can mention that a purely morphological
study doesn't offer a complete image on the medieval life. This analysis doesn't suggest
the dirtiness and stink of the streets or of the shady, moist inner yards.

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 Siena, a medieval town
in Italy.

Both medieval cities -

one irregular, the other
orthogonal structured –
show a compact, d
ense, homogenous
tissue. Housing is
integrated, while the
breaches of the tissue
accommodate
community’s most
precious edifices.

Berne, in
Switzerland.

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 All the free spaces as squares, main streets, hills etc., appeared as breaches
within the compact tissue of the town and gained therefore a particular importance as
public spaces. That’s why they were reserved for the monuments and other public
landmarks: the cathedral, the town hall, the castle, the market or some pieces of urban
furniture – a tower, a richly decorated fountain etc. While the dwellings, accommodated
by integrated constructions, inscribed themselves anonymously in the street’s continuity,
the important public edifices were individualised by their downtown location and by the
free space around, adding value to them. Moreover, their dimensions and the adorning
decoration stressed their symbolic importance and the whole community felt joined by
these precious objects. A hierarchy of collective values was thus established, which
organised the town space according to agreed, familiar rules. Due to this order, the town
of the Middle Age managed to offer to its inhabitants a patriarchal, warm, safe
atmosphere.
The Renaissance was an epoch when the intellectual and artistic elite was
deeply involved in a research activity, aiming to discover scientific truths, the universal
beauty, ideal forms in all the arts including architecture. In the field of town planning,
this effort produced the Ideal City - a concept that estranged itself from the living urban
organism, in order to reach a formal perfection issued from geometry. According to this
proto-utopia, the round shaped town had the church as central dominant - the circle
having been declared as an ideal form. The castle soon replaced it. The city was
surrounded by a star-shaped fortification system, appropriate to the new fire weapons
era. Though Ideal City projects remained intellectual exercises, while the town
continued to develop organically, watched by the administration.
Starting with the Cinquecento, Rome took the initiative to systematise the town
in order to reactivate its glorious past also by adding some Renaissance beauty. In fact,
the Middle Age has ignored the vestiges of the pagan times and has even contributed to
their ruin. So the old streets, the crossroads and squares still bearing the memory of the
Roman prestige, were redesigned now by the greatest architects of the time. But this
network that now defined the town's structure was superimposed on the medieval tissue
that therefore remained preserved on large surfaces. It happened then to a public
building, even a church, to be mixed among the inherited homogenous tissue next to
ordinary architecture. Then, the possible release of at least one of the facades was
commissioned, in order to create a local enlargement. Receiving thus an individualised
treatment, the building was saved from the anonymity of a two-dimensional facade in
range. It was now a monument-façade. (Or an architectural object-façade.)
Though, it has to be stressed that all symbolism and geometrical reshaping has
been accomplished only to that measure city life permitted it. Hence, the organic laws of
the traditional city combined with the spirit of the Renaissance determined the further
evolution of the European city.

Great architects of the Renaissance signed never accomplished projects of "Ideal Cities".
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 The Baroque times. While this enthusiastic action continued in Italy, France
adopted it as well not only at urban, but also at territorial level. Paris, the centre of the
country, was engaged to reach a new splendour in order to reinforce the prestige of the
absolutist monarchic state. As Paris did not possess any glorious antique ruins, neither
were there resuscitations, but the action focused on creating a brand new system of
knots and axes - meaning squares and streets to link them. In Rome the squares were
marked by antiques monuments or, programmatically by catholic churches, while the
new squares in Paris received preferably the equestrian statue of his majesty - as Plâce
Vendôme did. The two different shapes of the same phenomenon were significant: for
Italy as heard of Catholic Church that lived struggling times of counter-reformation, and
for France as the most centralised and autocratic kingdom in Europe.
In good baroque taste, urban space designers had a special faiblesse for the star-
like knots, with rays virtually vanishing towards infinite. But not even Louis XIV dared
to trouble Paris - that city of great personality, strong identity and a dynamic life - by
putting into reality stars-and-rays designs in the name of abstract aesthetical ideas.
Eventually, the new urban gestures of big scale were put into practice outside the town,
for instance at the Champs Elysées, and most spectacularly, at Versailles.
▼ The reshaping of the San Piedro Square was ▼ Efforts were made in Italy for creating enlargements within
a typical baroque gesture: monumentality, the built tissue, in order to individualise the buildings with
grandeur, and a quite free but elaborated important public functions. As a result, at least one façade
geometry. ▼ The Nolli plan of Rome presents gained the character of a monument.
the distribution of the free and built spaces,
according to their public or private character.
► André Le Notre, the inventor of the artesian
wells, created the Versailles Gardens.

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■ The 19th century: the interface between traditional and Modern town
Next to the big urban articulation works of the 16th, 17th and 18th century, the
main urban formula remained in Europe the old insula. It was a built area surrounded by
streets, bordered by aligned facades, divided into deeply advancing lots, succeeding
buildings’ wings being separated by lightening yards. It survived along the centuries
with several modifications and reached the 19th century under the name îlot. At the
beginning of Modern times, during the Industrial Revolution, this quite rigid spatial
organization had some difficulties when facing the new capitalist life. The îlot suffered
therefore all kind of spontaneous actions meant to adapt it to the over dense great cities
and the direct consequences of that density. The dwelling crisis had determined
improvised solutions meant to multiply the sleeping rooms. In Paris, for instance, the
most used solutions were the increase of the buildings' height around the inner yards,
and the addition of new wings of bad quality, crowded like parasites on the facades of
the yards. They thus became just deep, narrow wells, where shadow and humidity ruled.
This degradation of the built milieu was extremely acute in the popular districts. Not to
forget that beside the sun-lightening exigencies that had been neglected, also the
sewerage, the water supply system and the sanitation network were on a primitive stage.

Paris, Marais district in 1733 and in 1840. The new density of the built area reached a climax.

The 1853 intervention of baron Haussman on Paris had a crucial importance for
the city's development. Paris had to change in order to absorb capitalism and somebody
asserted a century later that if Hausmann had not exist, life itself would have done his
gesture; but who knows in what manner. Bref, Haussmann, the prefect of Paris under
Napoleon III, pierced the îlots creating "les grands boulevards" thus provoking a vivid
scandal. The gesture of Haussmann has been much more important than he himself
claimed, arguing only his intention to improve the public sanitation system and to
modernize the urban technical equipment. In fact, he determined economical and
political openings that finally launched the biggest progress in city's life.

15
 The margins of the incisions have
Paris. Haussmann’s piercing is stressed black. been carefully festooned.

The municipality had first executed the works on its charges, as its own
enterprise, but the haussmanian program was a call for the big financial and industrial
groups to further action. Haussmann had not the ambition to solve the problems of the
town ones forever by his gesture, but to open the way to evolution. He simply made
urban equipment possible: for the quick distribution of persons and merchandise, for
water supply, gas supply, sanitation network, sewerage etc. But the whole infrastructure
exploded soon after his piercing action: town halls, administration, ministries, schools,
high schools, libraries, posts, markets, abattoirs, hospitals, prisons, caserns, commerce
chambers, stations etc. were built. It seems that the problem has been simply to prepare
an urban structure able to accommodate all the functions and enough flexible to permit
their multiplication. That means to keeping the step with modern life and to support it.
In Western world only England avoided the îlot formula and took the liberty to
adopt an original one: the row houses. It was an elegant urban solution: a range of
dancing facades described residential squares; they were comfortable enough for their
inhabitants as well. They only were a little monotonous for the passers-by on the street.
The shock of the industrialisation and its consequences on both the cities and the
quality of city life couldn't but provoke reactions. One of them was the appearance of
the more or less utopic urban models. The 19th century has been actually the Golden
Age of the utopia, having a great influence on future European town planning.
The urban utopic models were born out of the critique of the reality, made by the
humanists of the epoch: the politologists - Engels, Marx, Proudhon, Fourier, the cultural
personalities - Ruskin, Morris, Ebenezer Howard, then chemists, priests, writers etc.
Ebenezer Howard was one of the parents of the Garden City - the most important
of all ideal models and the only one to be accomplished, may be except Fourier's
phalanster sketches. The Garden City was offering to the inhabitants - the workers - life
conditions according to left democratic laws, to hygienist theories and to the organic
rules of a decent life: a limited density, sunny apartments, free space between the
cottages, gardens on the back side, protection against noise ... that means all
industrialised, overwhelmed London lacked. The settlement was only quite far from the
working places and, moreover, from the places where modern life pulsated. And the
transportation means weren't yet developed.

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 ▲ Kensington Squares,
London, 1840.

► The Royal Crescent,

the Circus and the
Assembly Rooms in Bath.

The main reproaches of their criticism were the very reasons these ideas failed
when put into life: the authors conceived the town starting from zero, as if nothing had
been on place before. The new town was an exclusively rational product keeping no
touch to reality. The conceivers asked the town to be able to host Modern life following
the prescriptions of the hygienists and theoreticians as the only conditions for making
people's life happy. The town-models were therefore only a basement for the ideology
they generated. They were, just as the Renaissance ideal cities have been, beautiful
dreams webbed on theoretic tissues, while a city is in fact a continuing process that
nobody can completely control. Even if they certainly had an epistemological value, all
the urban utopic models of the 19th and 20th century had been failures, because the city
was treated as an object ones forever adapted to an imagined reality. And even this
reality was ambiguous and just supposed, the concept of "Modern" itself being still
confuse.
One can say that until the 19th century, the density and contiguity of the urban
fabrics had been assured by defence necessities, infrastructures and the primitive
transportation means, as well as by the exigencies of an economical way of building.
But the centuries of great transformations created such difficult problems, that only
radical solutions seemed to be able to face them. All kind of adaptations reached their
limits: the suffocated îlot degenerated, the row houses suffered from their lengths, while
the level of the common traffic gave a deathly hit to the Garden-City. Europe was living
the crisis of the big cities.

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The scheme for a Garden City conceived by Ebenezer Howard in 1898. According to these principles, a
second Garden City was built in 1919 in Welwyn, next to London. It was a self-sufficient settlement
having a limited number of inhabitants (32000-58000), a residential neighbourhood resembling the rural
one, cultivable gardens, a commercial area, cultural functions and a central park with a crystal palace for
entertainment activities.

Then the Haussmanian boulevard proliferated. The îlot was little by little
decomposed, the row houses melted and the result of their mixture was the collective
house along the boulevards called the Blockhouse. To put it otherwise, the block of flats,
built according to mass construction programs was born at the beginning of the 20th
century. Sometimes the blocks were organized in "precincts" (the German Höfe, called
cvartale in Romanian), i.e. around huge green interior yards, where the entire collective
equipment was. To be noticed: in opposition to the traditional European way of building
residences, the problem of the dwelling will be up to that moment the task of urban
politicies. It was the only hope to solve the crisis.

The Spaardammerbuurt ensemble, in Amsterdam: to be noticed the opposition between the north part that
was urbanised during the 20th century by means of îlots, and the precincts (Höfe) constructed after 1913.

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 ◄ "Die Mietskasernen", mass housing in Berlin
Charlottenburg called ironically "caserns for rent".
▼ The German world that was running through the
same crisis found the same solutions: from the
suffocated îlot to the high block of flats; some of the
former were assembled in big precincts, called in
German Höfe. Here is Karl Marx Hof, in Viena.

▼ The overcharged workers district Birkastaden in Stockholm and ▼ the new district
Spaardammerbuurt in Amsterdam. The architect M. de Klerk tried to erase the consequences of the urban
agglomeration, offering the citizen healthy living conditions in sunny apartments. The precincts were
conceived following the principles of the Garden City: they were characterized by big green surfaces and
equipped with all technical common facilities.

▲ ► The evolution of the collective dwellings: from the îlot to

the precinct with block of flats, then the formers decomposition
in favour of diverse forms of blocks.
▼ The blocks had different shapes: redans, bars, points.

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 ■ Modernism
The big boulevard bordered by blocks of flats appeared at the beginning of the
20th century, during the avant-gardes. After several experiences at quite big scale,
which certainly followed a determined hygienist philosophy, some sort of garden
outskirt made its appearance, having as origin the Garden City philosophy.
With the increasing dwelling crisis, as a result of the gestation of the proto-
Modern ideas in town planning and encouraged by the first experiences at big scale, the
architects felt more and more the responsibility of finding radical solutions. Approaches
as those in Berlin or Amsterdam were continued and, moreover, radicalised, theoretised,
legislated and led to their last consequences through exemplar realisations. The peak
was reached after the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) that
took place on the Mediterranean Sea in 1933. During the works - held in an elegant and
romantic scenery far away from the crowded towns - the less romantic reality of the
industrial city was discussed. The extraordinary personality of the architect Le Corbusier
- the central figure of European Modernism - dominated the works, despite the presence
of the more realistic German school. The results were edited in the famous Athens
Charta - the most Olympian and rhetoric document, which served as a guide for all
future urbanisation. With a categorical tone, the Charta declared the sudden discovery of
the ultimate general solution to the problems of the urban agglomerations. Here are
some of the town planning principles issued by the Charta:
▪ The zoning, meaning the separation of the town functions, was the most important
directive. The title of the works was actually "The functional city". The following were
declared as functions of the town: collective housing, services, industry, entertainment
and circulation. None but practical functions were therefore accepted as towns'
functions.
▪ The structure of the Modern town had to be completely different from the traditional
structure that did not correspond anymore to Modern life. Therefore it had to be erased,
in order to obtain free area for the new city. In the name of that program of granted
general happiness, the authority in charge with the terrain and the finances was
legitimated to ignore history, democratic rights and social psychology.
▪ The dominant circulation was by car, therefore the main communication network was
composed by large boulevards linking the separate zones: from home to work,
sometimes to the entertainment area and back. The traffic roads network accommodated
also the technical public infrastructure (sewerage, water supply, gas supply, electricity
etc.) The pedestrian paths and areas hardly occupied a place within these
preoccupations.
▪ The only urban housing form was the collective dwelling, everywhere the big density
of the population determined the dwelling crisis. Situated within large free spaces, the
blocks were divided into apartments conceived to grant the Existezminimum. Equal
living conditions for the workers couldn't lead but to harmony.
▪ Between the aired, sun-lit blocks, the whole green area was accessible to the public.
There were alleys for car circulation between the blocks and parking places at their
ground level. Sometimes, the main pedestrian circulation was designed to be indoors,
where daily public services were located.
Conclusively, neither Modern architects resisted the temptation of solving
definitively, by a single big gesture, the general existence problems of peoples' life in
big cities. Their apparent arrogance and demiurgic ambitions weren't but a combination

20
of professional savoir-faire and good, idealist intentions. They sincerely believed that
their architecture alone is able to create society a happy life. But unfortunately, what
they called "rationality" was in fact an extreme functionalism that ignored all "thin"
dimensions of human existence. As a consequence, their fairy dream was catastrophic
both for society and cities. The ideas of the Athens Charta together with its bad
application - in a dogmatic, global way, without considering the specific problems of the
places - left effects that even today are object to rehabilitation projects.

Parts of the outskirts of Europeans cities have been covered by a completely new structure having different
dimensions. ▲ up: Frankfurt, Siedlung Römerstadt, 1927, architect Ernst May. ▲ middle: Berlin-
Neukölln, Hufeisensiedlung, 1925, architect Bruno Taut. ▲ down: Amsterdam South, 1917, architect
Hendrik Berlage.

21
▲ Contemporary city for 3 millions inhabitants, project 1922, and "La Ville Radieuse", project 1931,
by Le Corbusier. The version on the right presents more explicitly the separation of the city functions
in parallel strips: offices (on the left), habitation (in the middle) ... till the industrial area.

◄ Le Plan Voisin
for Paris, 1925,
model. This project
proposes the full
reconstruction of
centre of Paris.
▼ Below, the
existing area of
Paris, with its
specific tissue and
next to it, the same
area organised by
Le Corbusier:
dwelling towers
planted on the
green surface that
is accessible to the
masses. The
executive authority
is legitimated to
ignore the specific
historical
development and
people's
democratic rights,
in the name of
society’s general
happiness.

22
▲ Le Corbusier, Unité d'Habitation at Nantes,
1952. (An other similar Unité d'Habitation had
been built in 1947 in Marseille.) This 165
metres long and 56 metres high block contained
337 apartments, all the daily urban services and
the specific circulations (commercial streets,
services, a hotel and a green area on the terrace
roof, as big as a stadium). The free ground floor
was reserved for the automobiles.
► The equivalent of the Marseille Unité
d'Habitation, counted in individual dwellings.

The After War period remained under the umbrella of the Modern town
planning ideas. Their application was only interrupted by the war. Le Corbusier's
authority was now reinforced by his paradigmatic architectural achievements and the
world was full of his fans. Based on his still last theories, architects started
enthusiastically the towns' reconstruction, although the former were actually not yet
verified. The epoch of "the big town planning projects" has come.

Märkisches Viertel,
Berlin, 1962, by Hans
Müller, G. Heinrichs
and Düttmann. That
kind of concentrated,
vertical satellite
district (in order to
reduce the distances),
quickly and badly
constructed on state's
charges, had to be
realised everywhere in
Germany. Luckily,
they first showed their
defects.

23
 ◄ Rochampton housing estate, a
project by the London architectural
offices accomplished in the '50ies, is
an example of a more human way to
interprete Le Corbusier's lesson. One
can see next to the new blocks of flats
older lots with row houses, as well as
other solutions based on the ideas of
the Garden City.
▼ The residential ensembles les
Courtilières, Pantin, 1955, architect
Emile Aillaud (left) and Park Hill
Sheffield, 1961, by Jack Lynn and Ivor
Smith (right). The functionalist rigidity
and the formal universality of the
Modern had been nuanced. These
solutions aimed to recover the lost
organicism and to gain a new urban
plasticity. Their limit was their very
creative unity: being real "plastic
works", "nothing could be eliminated
or added without troubling the
ensemble". These compositions are
forever closed, leaving no chance to
the future to intervene.

The experience of building completely new towns had its Golden Age during the
'50ies and '60ies. It has been an interesting lesson given by gifted and heroic architects;
but their products were rather masterpieces of plastic art and theoretical theses than
living environments for humans - as real organic towns are. The authors received big
architectural awards for their praiseworthy works, but the unanimous conclusion was:
never try again such experiences. Or at least during the lifetime of the next two
generations.

24
► Plan for
Toulouse le Mirail,
a satellite town
next to Paris, 1962,
architects Candilis,
Josic and Woods;
▼ Masterplan of
Brasilia, 1957, by
Lúcio Costa. A city
as beautiful as an
artistic work, full
of remarkable
objects of design-
architecture. But
strange and cold as
a surrealist scenery.
At right: the
Congress Hall and
the ministries.
Architect Oscar
Niemeyer, 1958.

► A vista along the

North-South axis,
towards Three
Powers Square; the
cathedral is visible
at the right extreme.

25
II. The critique of the Modern and of the After War

Just as the architects waited for general applauds for their intelligent manoeuvre,
they found themselves dismissed by the society. They were accused for all the sins of
Modern city life. The first who focused the general attention on the consequences of
cities' chaos were the sociologists. The visual chaos, the lack of urban limits, the
universality, monotony and sterility of built forms, their gigantic, strange and cold
structures people never really accepted, the no man's land - speaking of the non-
interesting, unfriendly, invaded, noisy, polluted and hostile public space, difficult to
keep in good condition, generating discomfort and insecurity, all that - they said -
produced social transformations. The loss of the places' identity - of their memories,
character and familiar atmosphere - had as consequence the loss of the inhabitants'
identity, the social alienation. The new spatial organisation of the cities is responsible
for the degradation of community life, for the undisciplined behaviour, the criminality
born under the cover of anonymity.
"The Athens Charta " was a town planning document that legitimated the neglect
of people's psychological needs in the name of a general happiness that was too general,
too abstract and reduced only to physical needs. "La Ville Radieuse" was Le Corbusier's
work that proposed a model of the Modern city as a concrete example of the Charta's
recommendations, and "Plan Voisin" was the formers concretisation in Paris. All these
three documents that were fundamental for the Modern ideology had been a target for
Modern city's criticism. One of the conclusions was that architects shouldn't assume
alone the absolute control of the town.
It was said that "La Ville Radieuse" was a scheme that actually expressed the
refuse of the town. It reached a peak of urban tissue's disintegration for the sake of an
abstract image and a universal mechanism that hegemonic rules imposed to the world.
The "Plan Voisin" was the plan that proposed the complete demolition of Paris' centre.
Paris' built milieu, history, atmosphere, memories, streets, îlots, buildings and gardens
were deemed to disappear. The monuments of the past had to be replaced by the
"monuments of the present": the blocks of flats called "Unité d'Habitation".
The architectural form was reduced to a single aspect: the monumental one. The
blocks were isolated and gigantic as the cathedrals of the past. But the monuments of the
traditional town - the cathedral, the town hall, the cultural establishment - having a
unique character, constituted public landmarks, respected values, cultural symbols,
while the dwelling blocks, having all the same banal et repetitive function, didn't
symbolise but a quick method of solving economically the housing crisis. "L'Unité
d'Habitation" was actually a vertical îlot. It has eliminated the problems of the sun-lit,
aeration etc., but raised psychological and sociological problems. Because when
speaking of dwelling, verticality is not essential to human nature.
The apartments in the blocks were dimensioned and organised according to the
principle of the Existenzminimum. Le Corbusier called them "living machines". (There
are several interpretations of this syntagm.) Anyhow, this serial way of accommodating
decently the working masses was extremely practical.
The physical site was reduced to some simple data: the sun, the horizon and the
public green areas. The town's terrain was stolen from the pedestrians and given to the
automobile. The Then the motorised circulation took the absolute power. Even the free

26
spaces at the ground level of the blocks on pillars became just hopeless parking places.
The problems of the traditional town had been removed, but replaced with
others. Here is a recapitulation of the Modern town's vices:

▲ The central zone of old Braşov, where a densely built

housing background sustains the main square and the
individual objects in it. ▲ Marly-Les Grandes Terres
ensemble, next to Paris. The dwelling blocks are treated as
individual objects floating in the green area, but their
similar forms and their distribution in line try to suggest the
difference between them and the public institution placed in
central position.
► "The civic centre" of Vaslui. The screen of blade-blocks
sustains the pedestrian space containing central institutions.
Although, the relationship between the built and the free
space remains confused.

▪ The relation between the centre and the tissue. A hierarchically organised street
network, a division into lots and a clear way of occupying the soil composed the
traditional urban tissue. Actually the tissue could have been anyhow, because its urban
value consisted in its adequacy to city's life. But it was this very tissue that sustained the
relevant images of the important public objects. One can reproach the Modern centres
the lack of a consistent built background to lean upon. They owe their configuration
only to a two-dimensional screen of blade-blocks, which made them act as a theatre
scenery, having the backstage beyond it. There is a lack of sincerity in this lack of
organic development.
▪ The confusion of meanings. Never mind their functions and meanings, Modernism
exposed all its objects as monuments, in terms of form and location. Ordinary blocks of
cheep dwellings expressed the attitude of prima donnas, even if society never accepted
them as such. The result was the neutralisation of any meaningful character of the
edifices.
▪ The relation between the built and the free area was completely changed. This was
another reason for social confusion. The built homogeneity was replaced by an
architecture of three-dimensional objects that transformed the town into a heap of
disparate objects, unable to define individualized spaces. The districts and even the
centres ("civic centres ", in Romania) tried in vain to find an identity.

27
 Vienna, project for an
imaginary city - 20th District,
conceived by Otto Wagner in
1910. The central space,
although quite rigid, is sustained
all around by a coherent, deeply
advancing background.

▪ The visual chaos was produced by the lack of a limpid urban structure. An appropriate
spatial organisation consisted in a centre - focusing the interest, domains - distinct areas
characterised by a certain dominant specific and the linking paths - divers itineraries
hierarchically organised. Well-known elements built this organisation in the traditional
town: the central square, where an important edifice dominated; the districts - that were
"specialised"; the streets - principal or secondary streets defined by the main facades of
houses. This organisation was able to produce comprehensible, piercing and memorable
images.
▪ The absence of a specific character of the domains. The domains are town areas with a
certain distinct character, be it in terms of morphology, functions, ethnical composition,
social level etc. - for instance: the commercial zone, an area with towers, the aristocratic
residential ensemble, Chinatown, the historic area... The cluster of architectural objects
missing their own domains, i.e lacking common coagulant features is responsible for our
disorientation within the Modern environment.
▪ The absence of the thresholds and limits or their weak quality. The mentioned heap of
disparate objects, having neither beginning nor an end, dilutes the comprehension.
Spaces are undefined. (The huge sleeping-districts of Bucharest give us an image.)
Rather than offering everybody the opportunity to walk everywhere - everywhere being
the same - you better offer people the satisfaction to discover natural thresholds - as for
instance a brook, the foot of a hill or its contour lines, or to find themselves in front of
constructed thresholds - like walls or gates, bridges, arches etc., separating the domains.
▪ The absence of little familiar landmarks giving to public space the quality of an
ensemble of "places". Easily recognisable places become agreeable and relevant, leading
to a friendly, warm relationship between people and their urban environment. They don't
simply offer the possibility of a better orientation, but contribute to creating superior
meanings - as for instance the feeling of belonging to a place. Art creations are good
means for that.
▪ The disappearance of the street and of the hierarchy of streets and its replacement by
big traffic roads has been followed by the replacement of the pedestrian squares by car
dominated crossroads. Thus, the patriarchal character of the paths has been transformed
into an unfriendly and confusing character.
▪ Finally, a totally new environment replaced suddenly and completely the urban
landscape, shape and vocabulary that had been subjects to thousands of years'
evolution.

28
► There are in Bern several small or
larger "places" - squares marked by
meaningful objects; the image shows
clearly the bears' pit and further the
cathedral.
► The long main street in Berne is
fragmented into segments by portals
with towers upon them. These are
"thresholds". Rich decorated fountains
further symbolically divide the street
segments between two towers. All
these objects play the role of public
landmarks.
▼ The visual chaos in a district in
Cluj: lack of centres, streets, distinct
domains, limits and thresholds, small
meaningful landmarks, nature,
history...

▪ The "big projects". The elaboration of closed, definitive town planning projects
continued even after the world war two, parallel to Modernism's and utopic models'
criticism. Architects conceived ocean-towns, tower-towns, towns on motorways, all sort
of phantasmic structures. They proved indeed great imagination and engineers found
remarkable technical solutions. Towns of high plasticity have been conceived, as the
case of Brasil. Other experimental projects have been achieved following intelligent
ideas, as Toulouse le Mirail, Pantin, Park Hill in Sheffield etc. Märkisches Viertel in
Berlin solved a big problem of the moment, even if in a critical way. Anyway, the big
general sin of all these projects was the ambition to plan everything, so that these mega
structural compositions left no chance for life or future to intervene. They soon got in
crisis, accused of the same arrogance as Modernism was. In the name of the present
concrete needs, they took the liberty to ignore life's continuity, its unpredictability and
the right of the future generation to establish at their turn, their own frame of life.

29
▪ The crisis of the relation to nature. There was no dialogue with nature during Modern
and Late Modern times; nature has been actually replaced by a banal and uniform, rather
grey grass and tree landscape. The contempt against natural elements transformed our
living environment into an artificial universe, which is strange to humankind's
existential condition. Humans need a certain relation with the organic environment.
Grass and trees are not sufficient, the more they miss pluralism and landscape control.
We feel good having sometimes the relief under our soles, perceiving natural colours of
earth, water, rocks or their related forms. On the other hand, our ancestors structured
their towns according to geographic conditions. Hills and valleys, rivers and lakes,
fjords or the desert defined the towns' configuration. But today technology makes the
reshaping of the geography possible and the constructors didn't resist the temptation of
lightening their work. They dried or regulated the rivers, they levelled the soil and they
built houses and towns ignoring completely the relief forms. Hence they banished all the
charm and, sociologists say, mutilated our souls.

◄ A German stamp from the 18th

century presents an ideal view of
Iaşi, surrounded by hills and rivers,
as it really used to be. ▼ One can
hardly detect the hills' silhouettes
beyond the blocks that not only
border the boulevards, but also are
spread out all over the place. You
can’t any longer feel the relief
under the asphalt, because the
contour lines were levelled. The
plan bellow presents only a small
part of the contour lines that could
have been recovered.

30
▪ The crisis of the relation public -private. Modernism gave all the terrain to the
community, but this absolute spatial freedom made the space completely insipid. The
whole diversity dissipated, the same community lost the interest for the gift. People had
the right to walk everywhere, but what for? No little surprises, no pluralist miracles, no
walls or gates protecting gardens, where the master's hand is obvious. The same
anodyne images everywhere, unlimited.

► A part of the Berceni district in

Bucharest. One finds such images
everywhere in the same district, in
other districts in Bucharest, in
Romania and, during Modernism,
everywhere on earth. ► The ancient
Moşilor Avenue being enlarged was
bordered by high blade-blocks;
beyond them one can still find the old
houses, lanes and streets. ► Below,
the boulevard Iuliu Maniu was
bordered as well, only this time the
back facades are addressed to other
new blocks. We deal in both cases
with the monotony of the front
façades along the corridor-boulevards
on one hand, and with the hopeless
back façades, which have nothing to
communicate to the "second hand"
spaces they actually ignore, on the
other hand.
▼ Le Palazzo Quirinale in Rome
addresses to the street long, quite
boring façades. But the wings of the
building also play a role in limiting
the public space of the street from the
private space of the gardens. Both
opposite facades have respectful but
different attitudes, according to the
character of the space they address
to.▼ On the right, the long façades
of the Procuratie in Venice could
appear as monotonous as well, if the
spaces on each side of the wings
were not of different kinds and of a
great quality.

31
▪ The crisis of the relation to history. Modernism accepted to erase all the existing traces
of the former town. Sometimes even the main direction of the ancient streets has been
contradicted by the new boulevards' network. Even if a certain vestige was saved, its
new sterile and neutral built environment resembled nothing of its presence within its
ancient world. This Modernist vice has been exploited by the totalitarian regimes, for
reinforcing their ideology and asserting their power. Some churches in Bucharest prove
that.

The memorial house Dosoftei in

Iaşi, a little isolated object
floating on a large green stain
surrounded by boulevards and
high blocks of dwellings. Some
centuries before, this house
belonged to a housing tissue,
where all the houses, gardens
and lanes had the same scale
and character.

Mihai Vodă church was

translated from its original site
– within the Mihai Vodǎ
monastery situated on a hill; it
is now hidden among high
blocks that suffocate it. The
church ones dominated the site
in a maternal way, but today its
new massive but meaningless
neighbourhood humiliates it.

▪ The relation between architecture and urban space. In Modern vision, each
construction was built from inside to the exterior universe, i.e. following only the
individual needs and refusing to yield under town's pressure. Times soon proved that
architecture has to react docile to the urban criteria and re-establish a significant
relationship with the urban tissue. The edifice is recommended to affirm its individuality
only in cases of beacon-edifices, while ordinary architecture is fine integrated in the
tissue. Contemporary architecture offers enough good examples even of public
institutions that accepted their condition of subordination to the historic tissue. The
announcement can be resumed at a facade individualised by its details, while the rest of
the building remains submitted to general regulations.

32
▲► The Bog’Art Company’s headquarters,
Brezoianu Street in Bucharest, by architect Costi
Ciurea, is a shocking contemporary apparition on the
old street. The building is although politely
integrated in the existing facades’ range, occupying a
traditional lot. It took the liberty to be higher than the
neighbours, because it faces a piazetta.▼ Barcelona.
The squared tissue projected by Cerda in 1859
surrounds the gothic area with its irregular tissue
with small meshes – down left. Two completely
different urban structures. ► Barcelona. The
relationship between the monument-building (la
Sagrada Familia) and the tissue based on îlots,
composed by ordinary integrated buildings.

33
III. The Contemporary City

Today’s tendency is orientated toward the little additions; instead of the big
gestures of the recent history, small local solutions are preferred nowadays. Different
architects with different personalities respond to the necessities, intermediated by the
investors and considering, of course, the urban regulations. Their architecture must be
submitted to the town and must respect the urban tissue – be it as integrated architecture
or starting a certain dialog between old and new, in a manner decided by the architect.
The instrument that establishes what’s permitted and what’s forbidden in each
place is the masterplan of the town or of the zone. It is the one that tries to conciliate the
public interests with the private needs and desires. The masterplan is the result of an
interdisciplinary work, defining relations and suggesting flexible structures, opened to
the future. It thus traces the main development directions of the town or area.
Masterplans themselves are submitted periodically to revisions and adaptations to life’s
dynamics, because the town is in continuous transformation. Under these circumstances,
masterplans are a sort of "permanent projects", always in evolution. Not to forget that
today’s preoccupations focus rather on the quality of life than on quantitative
development. Masterplans try to give answers to local contexts and to the "spirit of the
epoch", try to promote approaches that are able to integrate the most actual social,
economical and environmental aspects.
The general idea is today to think at the emancipated generations of the future,
which will have unpredictable necessities and mentalities, but also the right to shape
their settlements according to given conditions and their own judgement, as we did. The
evolution is not necessarily logic, thus also not predictable, but depends on the
competition of interests, of diverse circumstances, finally of life’s complexity. If nobody
knows how the future will be, let us leave to the next generations the chance of solving
their problems. How exactly? The infinity of responses to that question composes the
contemporary concept of sustainable development. This concept comprises not only
fixing the rules, but also developing a common strategy between the divers actors of the
urban scene, instead of aiming to solve the problems once and forever. Here is a part of
the problematic and further some examples of actual approaches.
▪ rehabilitating parts of the towns that submitted to Modern transformations;
▪ rehabilitating industrial and harbour zones, railway terminals etc., inherited from the
industrial era;
▪ re-establishing a more equitable balance between public and private space;
▪ re-establishing a more equitable balance between the architectural object and the
urban tissue; harmonising the meanings of the architecture with the urban frame;
▪ re-establishing a more equitable balance between the built milieu and nature;
reinventing the disappeared geographical elements or inventing such elements;
▪ re-establishing an equitable balance between technological achievements and
history;
▪ re-establishing an equitable balance between traffic roads and pedestrian areas;
▪ retissuing the pedestrian continuity;
▪ reinventing the street and the streets’ hierarchy, where it is diluted;
▪ humanizing all public spaces that now are anonymous, cold and hostile, by means of
small aesthetical gestures;
▪ revitalising or maintaining the vivid estate of the historical zones;
▪ conferring specific character to each urban domain and obtaining relevant, piercing
and memorable images;
▪ re-establishing a coherent relationship between centres and subordinated domains;
▪ humanizing the suburbs etc.

34
► Norway. An aerial view on
Bergen’s central zone. The harbour
area gained today the quality of an
agreeable promenade. ► Gamlebyen
district in Oslo – the ancient precincts
of the settlement – was until recently
a piece of hopeless periphery that
doesn’t miss any of the specific vices:
heavy traffic, railway terminals,
mediocre architecture occupied by
Pakistani emigrants etc. The
renewing project proposes: the
replacement of the major traffic
under the fjord and underground
(indicated in the image), the
construction of an opera house, the
creation of an archaeological park,
the rebirth of the old brook that
flowed for thousands of years into the
fjord etc.
▼ Urban images in Barcelona, a
town that brilliantly proved to Europe
that a pre Modern urban frame is able
to offer all conditions for keeping the
step with contemporary civilisation,
psychical comfort and perennial
aesthetical satisfactions, without big
demolitions.
The relief was invented or reinvented.
Small urban surprises improve the
quality of public spaces. The
contemporary town is the result of a
collaboration between architects,
artists and investors, under the
protection of an intelligent
administration

35
 A ruined railway area in Munich, occupying 173
hectares of traffic network, industry and vegetation.
This strong combination requires from the
development project a particular approach. The
designer didn’t propose a final solution, but suggested
a long-term strategy of occupying the surface. The
displacement to the town’s boundaries of the tracks
and industrial zones offers new chances to urban
development. By assuring an urban structure of high
quality, the plan leaves a maximal flexibility to future
investment initiatives

36
► Marseille: an audacious renewing
operation at economic and urban level,
promoted by the state seven years ago.
The image presents the perimeter of the
project Euro Méditerrannée, from the
harbour la Joliette to the station Saint
Charles. The small circles locate some
architectural objects to be set up.
It is an area with a strong commercial
and harbour tradition. In 1850, the docks
were very industrialised, the construction
of a railway terminal was running and
the town’s landscape was marked by a
strong industrialisation. In the 20th
century, people perceived the area as a
limited industrial district in a closed and
narrow Mediterranean horizon. The
misadaptation to the new production and
market scale suffocated it. It was in 1970
that Europort – Sud was built - a harbour
agglomeration of gigantic proportions.
1990 marked the beginning of a serious
concern about "the art of building a town
upon a town" – i.e. conceiving an urban
and economic strategy in order to the
area to evolve to an "informatised
industrial district". The area over the
waterfront will be reconsidered, as well
as the relationship between the harbour
and the town; the tertiary brain will
survive. La Joliette will receive a
harbour and urban infrastructure that will
harmonise in a contemporary spirit.
► Barcelona took the chances offered
by the building of the Olympic village in
1992 for rehabilitating an abandoned
industrial zone and inventing vivid
connections between town and sea. The
masterplan created conditions for the
district Nova Icària to transform itself
from a simple sleeping quarter to an
active urban domain. It was integrated
into the urban fabric, enriched by mixed
functions and esthetical significations.
The old industrial constructions have
been demolished and replaced by new
interventions, carefully linked with the
rest of the town. The authors of these
objects are today’s greatest architects.
The urban landscape gained a new
attraction due to urban pieces of
contemporary plastic art.

37
38
 IV. Bucharest

Ephemerality and instability seem to have been Bucharest’s destiny. Frequent

aggressions and political changes being unfavourable to a coherent urban development,
the town kept its patriarchal air until recently. The spontaneously born settlement missed
for centuriesmany organisation, any town planning principles, regulations, and therefore
any coherent structure.
The oldest maps of Bucharest date from the end of the 18th century. They were
elaborated by Austrian officers and show mainly a territorial situation from military
point of view than a description of the town. It’s the case, for instance, of the first plan
drown in 1770 and that is now in Vienna. It is rather a map that shows but a general
image of the town with only ten houses, but carefully indicates the accesses to the town
and the surrounding rich forests. (The former will more and more disappear on the
following plans, according to the reality.) The plan is called: Plan of the town of Bucharest
and and of the business happened January, 24th, 1770 around the monasteries Vakarest and
Kodretsan between the Russians and a Turkish body of cavalry troops.

▲ The old access ways to Bucharest are nowadays marked on a copy of the plan carried out in 1770 by
the Austrian officers: 1, 2. both Podul Mogoşoaiei and the route coming from Valea Prahovei and Braşov
were at North; 3. at North-East it was Uliţa Târgului din Afară (later called Calea Moşilor) that lead
towards Moldavia, Lvov, Cracovia and Leipzig; 3. at East, the way to Călăraşi; 4. at South, there was the
continuation of the axis coming from Moldavia, then crossing the town lead to Giurgiu and further to the
Otoman Empire; 5. the way to Târgovişte was at West.
◄ On the former page: an aerial picture of Bucharest’s central zone during the ’60ies.

39
 A detailed cadastral map containing 99 pieces – the first mirror of the pre industrial town – was realised by the
engineer Rudolf Arthur Borroczyn in 1846-1852. It was: Planul Bukurestului Ridicat tras chi publicat din porunka prea
înaltzatului domn stapânitor Barbu Dimitrie Ştirbeiu V.V., known nowadays as "The Borroczyn plan".

40
 Though Bucharest has been decided to be the capital of Valachia already around
1650, two centuries later, during captain Borroczyn, the population was about 12000
inhabitants on little more than 3000 hectares. It was a completely rural community that
lived in small one-storey houses, among gardens, vineyards, orchards and stables. The
plan shows an irregular tissue with constructions that are spread out over the vast
gardens or next to the streets, without much urban logic. The smaller or bigger yards
alternated with wastelands (maidane). The supposed precincts of the 16th century town
called "Kurtea Veke" can be distinguished in the middle of the plan, further the church
and the caravanserai Sfântu Gheorghe Nou that meanwhile became The Point Zero of
the capital, and eventually the most important commercial street - Lipscani (Leipziger
Strasse). The street stops on the West at the Podul Mogoşoaiei, then it is crossed
eastside by Uliţa Şelarilor (that is continued with Podul Calicilor) and finally it is itself
continued by the long Bărăţiei street. Dâmboviţa river was just being regularised,
although on the map it still flows along its ancient itinerary. A forgotten brook coming
from somewhere north where now Grădina Icoanei is, flowed into the Dâmboviţa.
During the whole epoch from 16th to 18th century, the main organisation
principle of the town had as landmarks the parish churches. As architectural and
spiritual dominants, innumerable churches divided the town into parishes. These
patriarchal units determined the quarters called mahalale. Several mahalale composed
districts, called plăşi (singular plasă); on maps they were differently coloured, so people
soon called them "colours". The ancient quarter around Lipscani, for example, was
situated within the yellow colour.
The future town planning activity owned a lot to Mr. Borroczyn’s plan. It was in
fact the last moment to be drawn, because after 1850 almost the whole town’s
constructed area started to be replaced. The times of emancipation were to come.

Two extracts of the Borroczyn plan: on the left it presents the distribution of the buildings, while the picture
on the right ignores it in order to stress the street network, the wastelands (maidane) and the churches.

41
 Podul Mogoşoaiei, the long street that crosses the town from North to South was
cut in 1692, at prince’s Constantin Brâncoveanu order. Monographies were dedicated to
that representative axis charged with history. That street never changed its itinerary,
which is remarkable in a troubled region like this, where discontinuity characterizes
times and space. It is along that street that not only the most elegant aristocratic and
bourgeois residences were built, but also churches and cultural foundations. The theatre
halls of the fanariote times and even the National Theatre were here, as well as the
official symbols of the "new times" in terms of public architecture. At Modern times
rising, for instance, it is on the site of the ancient medieval monastery St. Ioan cel Mare
(once reconstructed by Brâncoveanu’s demonstrative gesture) that this eclecticist pearl
called Casa de Economii şi Consemnaţiuni was erected in 1900; at the place of
theSărindar monastery Cercul Militar was built, and the Bishopric of Râmnic was
replaced by the Ateneu building. The epoch of the first kingdom is marked by the new
Royal Palace, the Carol Foundation, the Stock Exchange, the Post’s Palace etc. From the
glorious Restoration times dates the first skyscraper in Bucharest called The Telephone
Palace, and many other Modern edifices.
The third decade of the 19th century already announced the europeanization
process of the country starting with the capital, under a short good influence of the
Russian Empire by the Regulamentul Organic. Though the big transformations began
after the 1848 Revolution and continued after the Union of the Romanian states, then
after the Independence war and during the new Romanian kingdom under Carol I. The
most powerful Western influence assimilated was the French culture.
It was in 1859 that the proposal of tracing the two perpendicular axes in the
middle of Bucharest first appeared; they were set up during the next thirty years. Firstly
the axe west-east was pierced: Kogălniceanu, Elisabeta, Carol I, Pache Protopopescu
(the former just being the mayor of Bucharest had a main role in this important
accomplishment). The axe north-south - the boulevards Lascăr Catargiu, Magheru,
Bălcescu (Brătianu) - was set up several years later. The piercing resembled in essence
Haussmann’s gesture, only the urban tissues of Bucharest and Paris, as well as their
development were fundamentally different. Therefore, taking Bucharest’s heritage into
account, the pierces didn’t cause any dramatic sacrifice here. The two quasi parallel
streets – Podul Mogoşoaiei and Calea Moşilor – have been kept, as well a the plot
division. The irregular tissue was modernised by local interventions that acted
respectfully towards the built heritage. More determined gestures were fulfilled on the
wastelands – that actually existed all over the place.
These systematisation actions were accompanied by the necessary public works.
The pavement of the streets, for example, that had been of boards (from which derived
their name bridges, as Podul Mogoşoaiei was called) or of river stone. It was now
replaced by cable-stone, natural rock of Neufchatel, basalt or granite and asphalt
pavements – in accordance with the street’s importance.
During the 8th decade of the century, two Swiss engineers from the University
and ETH Zürich carried out a project for the water supply system. The inhabitants now
took the water from street pumps called cişmele. But in parallel, the old system of
excavated fountains and the street water sellers were still released at large. (The so-
called sacagii walking on the streets and crying "apa! apa!" were a familiar image even
at the beginning of the 20th century).

42
A perspective taken from the Colţea Tower in 1868

On the left: A fragment of the plan carried out by the commander Pappazoglu in 1871, called
Bucuresci, Capitala României. (The same officer had before carried out another interesting
retrospective plan that he called Planu primitiv alu Capitalei 1328.)
On the right: Zarafi Square, in the old capital’s commercial centre.

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► Next page:
▪ Left: Podul Mogoşoaiei during the 17th century
I. Ienăchiţă Văcărescu residence; II. The caravanserail and monastery Sf. Ioan cel Mare; III. Ioniţă Damari
residence; IV. Dumitrache Racoviţă residence; V. Meitani residence; VI. Pană Filipescu residence;
VII. Veneţiana Văcărescu inn (the Russian Consulat); VIII. Sărindar inn and monastery; IX. Dinu
Kreţulescu residence; X. Filaret inn (le Grand Théâtre); XI. Ghica-Catargi-Török residence; XII.
Kreţulescu inn and monastery; XIII. The princely palace (former Dinicu Golescu residence); XIV.
Domniţa Ralu’s theatre Cişmeaua Roşie; XV. Barbu Ştirbey palace; XVI. Romanit residence; XVII.
Neculescu residence;
XVIII. Creţulescu-Moruzi residence; XIX. Bellu residence; XX. Slătineanu residence; XXI. Filip Lenş
residence; XXII. Filipescu Vulpe residence; XXIII. Cantacuzino residence; XXIV. Filipescu-Cretzianu
residence; XXV. Darvari residence; XXVI. Mavrogheni palace; XXVII. Mavrogheni church.
▪ Also left, superposed on the 17th century: Podul Mogoşoaiei during the 19th century
1. Sf. Spiridon Vechi church; 2. Florescu residence; 3. Nicolae Brâncoveanu residence; 4. Măgureanu
church; 5. Constantin Vodă inn; 6. Stavropoleos church; 7. Zlătari inn and monastery; 8. Filipescu inn;
9. Câmpinencei inn; 10. Dedu inn; 11. Doamnei church; 12. Greceanu residence; 13. Slătineanu residence;
14. Momolo Theatre; 15. the Princely Palace ( former Ghica residence); 16. Bossel hall; 17. Peretz-
Vanicu residence; 18. Ştefănescu-Cretzeanu residence; 19. I.Manu residence; 20. the bishopric of Râmnic;
21. Gherasi inn; 22. the White Church (Biserica Albă); 23. V. Papara inn; 24. Barbu Văcărescu inn;
25. Sf. Vasile church; 26. Iordache Golescu inn; 27. Burki inn; 28. Manu inn; 29. Trubetzkoy inn; 30.
Plagino (Dissescu) inn; 31. Sf. Nicolae Tabacu church; 32. Caragea residence; 33. Boteanu residence;
34. Neculescu inn.
▪ Right: Calea Victoriei, the former Podul Mogoşoaiei during the 20th century.

The big lay out of the river Dâmboviţa took place in the same period (1880-
1885) by deepening and flooring its bed, by the alignment of its course, by constructing
the Ciurel floodgate and by planting its banks with grass.
If in the old town the gardens used to belong to private domains, yet in 1843 the
municipality decided to commission the design of a public garden. The Austrian
landscaper and horti-culturist Karl Wilhelm Mayer created it; it was called Kiseleff
Garden and was placed in the Kiseleff Avenue. Almost simultaneously, Mr. garden
master Mayer carried out the Cişmigiu Garden "on the place of a stinking, infectious marsh in
the middle of the town". About the former, the Austrian officer W.Derblich commented in
1858: "the prairies and the flowers, the hills, the lakes and the islands, the grottos, the shrubs, the
brooks and the alleys are joined by a gracious variety ". The two gardens were indeed set up in
the Romantic manner of the time. (Not to forget that the Romantic garden landscape
used free, organic compositions, inspired by literature and myths and proving a fantasy
that often suggested the paradisiacal condition, in opposition to the French Classicist
style, where geometry dictated the sophisticated design of the vegetation.)
Two other parks of the same epoch but a different concept were the Carol Park,
conceived under the influence of the French School, and the Ioanid Park, orientated
towards the principles of the Garden City. (The former was a small garden with sinuous
alleys, surrounded by a group of villas.)

44
45
 At the end of the 19th century, architect Grigore Cerchez began the study for
Bucharest’s first modernization plan, soon followed by the first systematisation plan of
the town conceived in 1894 by the architect Alexandru Orăscu. Other plans followed, as
for instance that by architect Cincinat Sfinţescu, in 1914-16, until Royal Decree
approved the Masterplan of Bucharest in 1935.
The entire future town planning stages of Bucharest based on this excellent plan;
it remained till today a valid landmark. Although it was conceived in Modern times –
two years after the issue of the Athens Charta, Romanian architects were aware of –
Bucharest’s Masterplan shows the same sensible attitude towards that living organism
named town, as the former plans. It lacks the Corbusian radicalism, but adopts rather the
theories of the Garden City, next to a Haussmannian influence. Beside the Western
influences, one finds there the consideration towards the local context – a phenomenon
that characterizes the border regions though irradiated by the cultural centres. Except the
interventions justified by modernising necessities, neither the streets network nor the
traditional lots division haven’t been destroyed just for the sake of new ideas. Moreover,
the development directions proposed by the plan corresponded to the organic extension
tendencies of the town.
Concerning the construction of new streets and buildings, things were indeed
simpler in Bucharest than anywhere else in Eastern Europe, because the built heritage
here still kept its poor and loose character, offering enough free or weak quality spaces.
The epoch being favourable from economical, political and cultural point of view, the
town’s image profited immensely, by changing in a spectacular way. That’s how the
assertion of Bucharest being the most Modern capital in South Eastern Europe during
the thirties can be explained. Truly, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, for example, possessed
an inherited patrimony to be safeguarded, therefore the Modern interventions couldn’t
be there but local.
Multi-storey buildings bordered the big boulevards, be it public institutions,
hotels or blockhouses for dwelling. The most illustrative is boulevard Magheru -
Bălcescu, because it gained its present physiognomy just between the wars, under the
proud, admiring eyes of a population that always dramatically desired the synchrony
with the Western world. Despite the general Modern touch obvious at all the
blockhouses and their submission to new town planning laws, there is a clear difference
between them. Each façade is an image of the architect’s artistic temperament and of his
own manner of interpreting the new trend; some of them are more radical Modernists,
others remained quite attached to Romanian or cosmopolite elements of the past.
Together though they created a coherent ensemble of quite high quality.
Except the big collective housing blocks downtown, during Modern years some
housing districts were built around the central area. They were either private one family
villas each designed by free architects, or social dwellings, i.e. smaller houses built
according to a single project usually for workers of the same company. Brilliant
examples for the first category are Cotroceni, Floreasca or Domenii district, and Vatra
Luminoasă for the second.
Consequently, between war town planning and architecture were successful
accomplishments, worth to be examples for the contemporaries.

46
Elisabeta
Boulevard at its
beginnings in
1901. The
boulevard had
been pierced as
major axe two
decades before.

A detail of a
plan dated 1911.
The two axis
West-East and
North-South are
clearly visible,
the last one
being not yet
finished, even in
the centre. The
big public
architecture
achievements of
this epoch are
also marked on
the plan.

47
 ▲ Bucharest is an urban agglomeration
situated in the plain. It developed
spontaneously as a town, in a circular
way. Big radial axis cross the city from a
town gate to the other, through the centre.
◄ Social housing in Vatra Luminoasă
quarter.
► Next page: Views along the Brătianu
(Magheru-Bălcescu) Boulevard. The first
building that gave the tone to Modernism
has been the Aro company headquarters,
built in 1931.

48
49
 The Masterplan of the capital was several times actualised after the second war,
according to the abusive and non-professional directives of the communist party. Their
effects were hardly attenuated by the efforts of the architects, who carried out a lot of
town planning sketches and studies inspired by the European experience. During the
60ies, for example, the new quarters Drumul Taberei and Balta Albă in Bucharest
followed the Modern principles still valid in Europe. But while the European town
planning changed soon direction under the pressure of the critique of Modernism, the
party dictated in Romania the same way to be continued, even beyond its limits. The
communist dictatorship augmented its interference in towns’ development with
catastrophic effects. Lacking any sensible reasons and limits, the leader ordered the
blocs density to be increased, while the infrastructure of all kind remained insufficient
and badly kept. The uniformity and sterility of the architectural forms in the popular
quarters, actually a characteristic of all the Eastern countries, in Romania reached
nightmare proportions.
The building of the Peoples House and of the ensemble called Civic Centre
started in Bucharest in 1985, during a few months having erased all trace of life, human
habitat, individual and collective memory, history and inheritance from a large surface
of the central zone. A monstrous and anachronic architectural ensemble took its place by
a dictatorial act, expressing limited and megalomaniac culture and imagination. This
implant is placed arbitrarily towards the topography of the place, towards the structure
and the character of the town. The pre-existing street network was brutally interrupted;
the morphological scale was irrationally modified. Finally, the intentioned
monumentality isn’t but the expression of a primitive totalitarian spirit.

On an aerial vista over the zone convicted to mutilation, one has marked the brutal intervention of the
80ies: The Casa Poporului and the boulevard Victoria Socialismului with its extensions.

50
 For many years the city has faced the necessity of retissueing this wound and
rendering this now compromised area back to town. But things seem to be more
complicated than expected - for objective economic reasons, for the general cultural
confusion and for particular interests.
A couple of years before, a big international conquest was organized, having as
topic the integration of the Peoples House and of the Victoria Socialismului Boulevard
into the town. A Masterplan of the zone was required. A prestigious international jury
appreciated the project of the important German architect Meinhard von Gerkan. Only
here, in Bucharest, he and his awarded project are largely ignored, except by architects.
Or perhaps its time isn’t come yet.

A view on the Casa Poporului along the boulevard. On this model, the Dâmboviţa River is at right.

The awarded Meinhard von Gerkan project proposes a new network that aims to integrate the Peoples’
House and to link the existing tissue’s scale to the gigantic communist structures. The verdure that will
inundate even the boulevard will humanise the area, while a cultural building in front of the Peoples’
House, the skyscrapers of a mall on the river’s bank and other buildings next to the palace try to diminish
the aggressive visual impact of this absurd dominant.

51
 The model
presented by
professor
Meinhard von
Gerkan at the
international
competition
Bucureşti
2000.

Present day’s Bucharest, the once blooming capital of about sixty years ago,
recommends itself now as a still grey, loose and unfriendly town. It still is the victim of
often non-professional decisions, independent from public interest.

We all use the public space.

Many of us hurry to influence its image.
Only a few of us know what the quality of the public space is.
Anyway, nobody is responsible for anything.

Bucharest is the result of an ingrate history and a confused present. Not true
specialists, but the obedient ones are demanded when dealing with a new intervention
concerning the town and people’s real interests. Public debates with the cultural elite
aren’t anymore organized. One takes no risks when big money is involved.
As a result, Bucharest remains a chaotic, tiresome town people more and more
have to defend from. Instead of the agreeable public spaces that are so necessary, the
constructions rising all over the place are fences and medieval walls around the
properties. This symptom is significant and alarming. But for whom?, I ask. Anyhow, it
proves that people feel the public space as a threat they have to defend themselves
against: it brings noise, pollution, indiscretion and delinquency.
Analysing the big number of dysfunctions making of Bucharest today a confused
and uncomfortable built milieu is not the target of this text. We will limit ourselves to
mentioning only one of the traditional town’s qualities that, being in danger to be erased
by Modernism, is today a main preoccupation in the countries with a developed civic
conscience. It is the quality of public space.
Bucharest is deprived of friendly public spaces, charged with precious meanings
for the community, as the patriarchal towns used to have and as the Western cities try
hard to create or to maintain. Our community is disjoined, as the town itself is
incongruent and therefore unable to coagulate its society. As a start, even small gestures
of true urban aesthetics could produce surprisingly positive social effects. They could
"rewarm" the relations between the town and its population. Not by big national

52
cathedrals – expression of an obsolete, infantile and frustrated mentality. One has plenty
of big gestures that in Romania had been always failures – Spark House and Peoples
House being two of them. No more statues of great heroes on high pedestals, but little
amusing plastic allegories. No more strange politicianist gestures, but small democratic
ones.
Ordinary architecture, i.e. housing at commerce, was in the traditional town
integrated into the unitary tissue. Only the significant edifices were built as isolated
pieces, as small or big monuments. They were accepted by the population as collective
symbols and managed therefore to coagulate affectively the inhabitants around them.
Where are they in Bucharest, these public edifices and squares that reveal a collective
memory or try to create collective values, truly accepted and assimilated? Where is our
"Genius loci" – the spirit of the place? The one that individualises, spiritualises and
blesses a living milieu?
As in the much-criticized Modernism, all the town’s streets and most part of
other public spaces belong to automobiles. All spaces that could be "places" for
pedestrians aren’t but car invaded crossroads. After all, the idea of pedestrian continuity
doesn’t exist yet in our country. Fences, barriers, interdicting indicators for pedestrians
are everywhere. And worst of all, every day new buildings sitting comfortably on full
ground floors are planted and well protected by bodyguards; they remorselessly steal
town areas. No columns at the ground floor, creating permissive spaces at the street
level. No mixed functions, as traditional in Europe and actual abroad; offices and
commerce, for instance, is a well known combination that leaves the street level and
even the mezzanine, accessible to citizens.
The images in the town are not at all controlled. We live in a total visual chaos,
overwhelmed by all sort of discontinuities, including the kitsch; here are forms
aggressing us, there are hopeless wastelands; sick colours and lamentable
improvisations...
Everything happens because of a still ignorant and sufficient but egocentric
administration. But do we, their victims, really know what to ask them? Do we know
what to reproach to a temporary executive chef or another, except the proud exhibition
of the personal taste and the fulfilment of their financial interests? Do we really know
what a built environment of quality demands?
Some guidelines taken from the highest European level on the matter can be
useful. It is just a monotonous list, but each point could constitute a topic for a seminar.
If there were!

53
 V. "Europe and Architecture Tomorrow"
Propositions for Europe built environment
Extract from the White Paper
Edited by the Architects’ Council of Europe

■ Elementary conditions for the quality of life in a city:

▪ each European citizen must have a dwelling;
▪ the access to the daily activity place must be easy;
▪ the public infrastructure must be accessible day and night, in full security;
▪ the rural settlements must offer suitable living conditions at the general civilisation
level;
▪ citizens must benefit from a natural environment easily to reach outside the town;
▪ the pollution caused by traffic and industries must be limited;
▪ the built environment must be of good quality etc.

■ Elementary conditions for the quality of the built environment in a city:

▪ the quality of each dwelling must reach at least a decent minimum;
▪ the quality of the public spaces must reach a decent level. It is much to say about.
Briefly, some demands for a friendly public space are: its controlled relation to the
private space; controlled and diversified urban images with a clear and memorable
character, many pedestrian area linked by pedestrian continuity, personalised "places"…
▪ aesthetically agreeable urban furniture, accorded to contemporary taste and spirit;
▪ architectural objects of quality, no matter the dimensions, importance and location;
▪ the quality of the detail – elegance at small scale;
▪ the industrialisation limited, for avoiding monotony and expressive poverty;
▪ the construction of new buildings limited on the still free sites,
▪ but rather the reshaping of the already built environment;
▪ preserving or introducing again, as much as possible, the traditional urban structure of
the European town, with its homogenous tissue and its individualised monuments,
charged with meaningful cultural values;
▪ the preservation of the historic areas and their functional reconvertion;
▪ the polycentric structure of the big cities;
▪ the preoccupation for creating a coherent relation between centre and suburbs;
▪ the care for the peripheries, for their increased quality at least until the level of human
dignity;
▪ discouraging car traffic, and encouraging common traffic;
▪ translating the car itineraries, as possible, out of town and underground;
▪ the increasing number of pedestrian and half pedestrian spaces;
▪ the development and control of tourism;
▪ the increasing role of architects, landscape architects and designers in drawing the
urban strategies and taking decisions of public interest in architecture and town planning
matters;
▪ focusing the sustainable development in town planning policies;
▪ the increasing role of architectural criticism...

54
 ■ Elementary conditions for the quality of architecture in a city:
▪ increased esthetical and cultural value;
▪ controlled physical qualities;
▪ the use of adequate techniques and building materials;
▪ social adequacy;
▪ respect for the criteria related to sustainability;
▪ ecological adequacy;
▪ functional flexibility;
▪ integration into the cultural milieu;
▪ consideration for the influence of architecture upon human behaviour;
▪ the permanent conscience of the architectural object’s double role: serving its direct
users on one hand, and contributing to the continuous shaping of the environment on the
other hand…

This is an invitation to reflection, research, debates…!

55
Recommended bibliography:

CASTEX, J., Depaule, J.CH., Panerai, Th., Formes urbaines: de l’îlot à la barre,
Dunod, 1980.
CHOAY, Francoise, L’urbanisme, utopies et réalités, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1965.
HALL, Peter, Oraşele de mâine, All. 1999.
HARHOIU, Dana, Bucureşti, un oraş între orient şi occident; 1997.
JACOBS, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Randam House,
New York,1961.
"Europe and Architecture Tomorrow" - Propositions for Europe built environment.
Extract from the White Paper edited by the Architects’ Council of Europe,
Bruxelles, 1995.
LYNCH, Kevin, The Image of the City, The MIT Press Massachusetts, 1969.
ROWE, Colin & KOETTNER, Fred, Collage City.
SITTE, Camillo, Arta construirii oraşelor, Editura Tehnică, Bucureşti, 1992.
VON MEISS, Pierre, De la forme au lieu, Presse Polytechnique Romande,
Lausanne, 1986.

Some images and information presented in this course has been taken from:
■ Bauwelt magazine, nr. 6, Sept. 1996; ■ Berne, Edition Barth; ■ Catalogue of the
exhibition Bucureşti, anii 1920-1940, între avangardă şi modernism; ■ Bucureşti, an
album edited by Urbanproiect; ■ Gheorghe Crutzescu, Podul Mogoşoaiei, Editura
Meridiane, 1986; ■ Gheorghe Curinschi Vorona, Istoria arhitecturii, Editura Tehnică,
Bucureşti; ■ Gheorghe Curinschi Vorona, Veneţia, Editura Tehnică, Bucureşti;
■ Peter Derer, Locuirea urbană, Editura Tehnică, Bucureşti, 1985;
■ Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, Thames and Hudson, 1992;
■ Dana Harhoiu, Bucureşti, un oraş între orient şi occident, 1997; ■ Iaşi, an album
edited by Urbanproiect; ■ Vittorio Lampugnani, L’enciclopedia of the 20th century
architecture, Thames and Hudson, 1989; ■ Radu Patrulius, Locuinţa în timp şi spaţiu,
Editura Tehnică, Bucureşti; ■ personal archive.

56