It is a heritage with a peculiar dynamic; it might be described as “specific”. As a rule, an archival stock – which is potentially immense – is continually growing in terms of stock, documents etc., as they are archived (in specialized institutions or at their issuer) or come to supplement the existing ones, further to legal obligations, through purchases or donations. This natural tendency is subject to corrections. Part of them mainly relate to the lack of interest in this kind of heritage, often manifested (and it is not only the architects’ fault) by throwing away the entire documentation or just the incipient phases of a project: sketches, representation of an idea in sketchy drawings which are occasionally more revealing for the overall view of a building than the final project. What disappears forever, therefore, is that essential “laboratory” of a project’s evolution which enables us to get a deeper insight into an architect’s conceptions. On the other hand, it is a well-known and regrettable fact that a large part of the archives of the former socialist design institutes has vanished or was simply destroyed deliberately. Along with these archives have also perished the memory of this profession as recorded over four decades and any possibility to reconstruct the context in which the profession was practised, with its more generic or minute details, in a period that caused profound changes in cities through the large quantity of constructions of all kinds. In this context, it is important to discuss not so much their quality as the fact as such.

It is a highly diverse heritage. A paper published a few years ago – Fondul documentar de arhitectură din România [The Architectural Archives in Romania]1 – tackles a lot of issues and presents many standpoints, and also performs an “inventory” of all types and categories of documents which form in the broadest sense the archives of interest to the architecture and urban planning field: original designs or copies thereof, whether implemented or not (from preliminary sketches and drawings to intermediary versions and the final execution project), competition projects, notes, contracts, building permits, correspondence (with the clients and the authorities), vintage photographs (including photographs taken during execution), memoranda, various manuscripts, personal details (family, education etc.), mock-ups, documents of events dedicated to architecture such as exhibitions and related catalogues, posters, pamphlets, etc. The architecture studio (be it a small individual office or a large firm) can sometimes resort, through the authors of the projects, to what one might call “verbal archiving”, one of the most interesting parts of a studio archive. Another category of documents are those that have reflected the relationships with the authorities (applications, memoranda, challenges, decisions, etc.), and which cannot be found among the printed and published documents. The “media” on which this information is stored – “traditional” (paper, tracing paper, foil, etc.), digital, CD or DVD – are all more or less perishable (especially paper, but let us remember that we do not really know the resistance over time of the electronic medium), so that this heritage is subject to decay in time.

It is an immense heritage, largely unknown, and, often, difficult to access. On some occasions one comes across archives solely by accident; on other occasions, a thorough knowledge of whatever theme can only be acquired after consulting various collections, located in various archives. In the happy cases, the archival documents can illustrate each step taken on the road towards the materialisation of the architectural idea: from the client’s request to the first sketches, intentions, to the final design and all the building stages. The volume of architectural archives cannot be quantified and I don’t think that this kind of information has any importance whatsoever. The fact remains, however, that the volume of documents with significance for architecture – and the city – is a very large one.
Paradoxically, maybe, the interest in archive research (i.e. the collections containing items referring to Romanian architecture and towns) has massively increased in the architects’ milieu only in the last 30 years or so, after 1989. In the previous periods (including the interwar decades), there were very few architects who resorted to archival documents for their studies and research. Paul Niedermaier, Eugenia Greceanu, Andrei Pănoiu and Mihai Opriş were among those whose important works focused on archival research. However, their large majority was grouped around the National Commission for Monuments and, therefore, their in-depth studies only served as preliminary steps to the restoration of historical monuments recognised as such (and already on the list of monuments). They were joined by archaeologists, historians and art historians, better acquainted with this type of research.