Commentary Buzești - Berzei - Uranus: guest Constantin Enache

Adrian Bălteanu: In the 1/2011 issue of "Arhitectura" magazine there was an article about the realization of the doubling of the Buzești - Berzei Diametral, how would you comment on the published articles?

Constantin Enache: We have an expectation from public opinion and colleagues that does not match our reality. Normally, in countries with a longer experience in the market economy, an action of such complexity and going beyond several electoral cycles is categorized as "urban planning operations", and there are development agencies in charge of the whole project and its implementation. Public opinion here confuses the urban planner with the development agency. In reality, in this case, the urban planner intervened between December 2005 and June 2006, when a section of the project was approved by the CGMB, after which other departments of the city hall, outside the Urban Planning Department, intervened. The urban planner was called in again in 2011, when the need to update the documentation arose. In our country, what in other countries happens in an institution that coordinates the entire operation and is responsible for all its components, happens in a sort of relay relay. Everyone goes part of the way, then passes on, and so on and so on, losing information along the way and shifting the emphasis away from the original intention. I cannot make pertinent comments on the material shown because there it is about the implementation of town planning provisions, implementation in which we had no involvement.

A.B.: What did you mean when you said that in 2006 only a section of the project was approved?

C.E.: It was a choice of the General Council at that time, the chief architect and the then mayor. It was not a special situation, for most of the works targeting infrastructure, especially road modernization, it was done in this way: only the part of the urban planning documentation concerning the size of the public domain was approved: the width of the roadway, the sidewalks and the alignment of buildings. I do not know why the General Council did this, but I think that, in principle, it wanted to show that it was only in the public interest and that it did not want to give preferential advantages to certain residents. The second justification could be haste. We, the architects, have not agreed on the conformity of the adjacent frontages. It became obvious in the meetings of the Technical Committee for Urban Planning that it would take a long time to reach an agreement. Some members of the committee wanted to go into as much depth and detail as possible, coupled with architectural illustration, while others felt that the regulations should be limited to the most general aspects, which could be the subject of future public architectural competitions. In these circumstances, the decision-makers who were in a hurry gave up regulating the remaining components of an urban plan.

A.B.: We would like you to tell us a few words about the importance of the new artery for the city.

C.E.: There is a lot to say. In the recent debates on the project it can be seen that everyone sees a fragment of this operation. Probably from all these overlapping fragments the truth emerges. I support the realization of this axis, with the main objective of protecting the Victory Way. To get today's crazy automobile traffic off the Via Victory. For me, Calea Victoriei, with its monuments and its atmosphere, represents the soul of our nation that gave birth to this capital, it is the repository of what makes us special in Europe. The Calea Victoriei identifies us more than the shopping area in Lipsknie. Over the last 40 years, I have seen a steady degradation of the Victory Way, first through neglect, the decline of commerce and urban evening life, and after 1989, the chasing away of pedestrians by giving priority to cars, in some places there are almost no sidewalks. The only solution I can see for reducing car traffic in the central area of Bucharest, on Calea Victoriei and Bulevardul Magheru, is to create an alternative, which would be on the edge of the protected area, the Buzești - Berzei axis. The second target is to ensure a connection of a certain prestige and fluidity between significant places in the city: the Government and the cultural area of Victoriei Square - Gării de Nord Square - the Parliament Palace and the Neamului Cathedral. This connection must be ensured in such a way that the traffic problems are solved correctly, I am referring here also to the taking over of high-capacity public transportation...

A.B.: Why don't we also build a subway, the PUG foresees the extension of the Magistrale IV from the North Station to the south, on this axis?

C.E.: Because the Metro depends on the Ministry of Transportation. Until state institutions work together, we will not have a Capital. The city can only finance surface transportation under current legislation. In terms of transportation capacity, the tram is next after the subway, the municipality - that's as much as it can finance - that's as much as it does. In addition to these two targets, I would add a third. It has recently been brought to my attention by colleagues who deal with disaster risk that, on Calea Victoriei and Bd. Magheru, the only current north-south links, there are a concentration of many buildings with more than six storeys, with reinforced concrete structures from the 1930s, from before the anti-seismic design and which have never been thoroughly reinforced. By the time they are strengthened, in the event of an earthquake, there is a good chance that both arteries will be blocked by the collapse of some of these buildings. The Buzești axis, with a small existing building front and new buildings designed to current standards, could be the evacuation route we need in such an undesirable situation. Coming back, there are also car-loving people who just want a wider thoroughfare, but that's not who I had in mind.

A.B.: How do you comment on the voices that want to allocate less space on the new bypass for personal car traffic and distribute what is gained to other forms of travel?

C.E.: I think not all streets in the city should be made the same. They should have different vocations. To make Calea Victoriei predominantly pedestrianized, the new Buzeștiul cel nou needs to remain pedestrianized under certain normal conditions. On the other hand, the Buzești - Berzei axis has bicycle lanes. The doubling of the diametral has been compared to the highway in Boston, it is not like that, we are dealing with an urban street that has a tram in the middle, two traffic lanes on one side and two on the other, bicycle lanes and sidewalks, it has pedestrian crossings at ground level with traffic lights, so it is not a highway and those who call it so are showing incompetence or ill-intentions.

A.B.: You said earlier that the adoption of the PUZ was an emergency. What was the urgency?

C.E.: The urgency referred to the traffic measurements made at that time in key areas of the city. In Unirii Square the blocking capacity had been reached, as Bucharest is unprepared for alternative solutions to discourage traffic in the central area.

After all, no urban intervention is ideal with only positive aspects. I tried to balance a realistic vision that takes into account the resources and needs we have with an idealistic vision that sounds good in theory, but in practice pushes us into inaction and a complicated situation. Bucharest must remain the engine of the country's economic development, so first and foremost it must work. On the other hand, Bucharest must bear a stamp of memory and specificity (for me, this is fulfilled above all by Calea Victoriei), but first of all it must function, in order to pull other parts of the country with it. Condemning Bucharest to inertia and the countryside is a fundamental error. Within a metropolis, we are not only talking about individual movements, but also about normal flows for supplies, emergency interventions and public transportation. To paralyze any intention to complete operations to modernize the city to make it manageable and functional for the sake of a utopian future is not the right way. A first utopia that I have identified is that Bucharest residents would agree to leave their cars at home and travel from Victoriei Square to Parliament and the future Cathedral of the Nation only by metro or surface public transport. I have to make an aside here, in the mornings, the metro is overcrowded, imagine that these passengers would be joined by those who travel by car. Let's move on to the second utopia: we will have the necessary resources for the state to support the consolidation and restoration of the 2,627 buildings inscribed in the 2004 Bucharest Historical Monuments List, whether they are in compact and representative areas or scattered, abandoned and in a state of conflict with the neighborhood. The third utopia assumes that we will have the resources and the time to build a dense and convenient subway network in the central area; the fourth: we will make all the necessary gestures for the social integration of that part of the population now in extreme poverty, uneducated, who cannot maintain the buildings in which they have taken shelter, but, on the contrary, vandalize them to ensure a minimal income from selling iron or using as fuel the carpentry in the rest of the house, in winter, when a whole family survives cramped in one room. For the sake of this utopian future, we are being proposed a present in which we copy, on Berzei Street and Baldovin Pârcălabul, models of intervention from cities of the world with other resources, other character and other history. What we need to copy is the care for the historical heritage and its enhancement, but necessarily coupled with the care to keep the city attractive, in working order, to spend public money efficiently. I believe that a love of the city based solely on emotion, unaccompanied by reason and professionalism can destroy it, not enhance it.

Since the magazine 'Arhitectura' is addressed to professionals, the following subject, which I have generally avoided discussing in order not to compromise the idea of a monument, must also be addressed. The list of Historical Monuments that Bucharest has at the moment is a concoction made with good intentions, but good intentions do not cover the lack of rigor, the lack of method with which it should have been made.

If we want the List of Monuments to be a list that we all want to defend and protect, it must be drawn up rigorously, on a scientific basis. It was done in a great hurry and without sufficient funding in 1993, in a rush to protect the city, by a few employees of the Historic Monuments Department who went down most of the streets and marked addresses where they assumed houses of interest to the city were located. What was done then was not done with the necessary scientific rigor. We don't even have a photographic inventory of these buildings, we only have a list of postal addresses that were not debated in committees, they were not selected on the basis of criteria. The List of Historical Monuments is a mixture of really valuable buildings with errors, buildings put up out of the emotion of the reviewer. On the other hand, valuable buildings are missing. In the past 20 years, no one has taken the list to re-examine it and put it according to scientific criteria; on the contrary, all the studies that have followed have started from the idea that a building on the list really does meet the conditions for a monument, which I state with all knowledge that this is not true. Until we have a consolidated list, cleaned up, correlated with the capital's development strategy, a credible list that we can all defend, until then monuments are more at risk than we think because, at the moment, the ease with which houses that have been on the list by mistake or overzealousness are being downgraded is making some owners of really valuable buildings, who are inclined towards real estate speculation, say 'why not downgrade mine, if it was possible to do it elsewhere? That's why we have an avalanche of applications for downgrading which you don't have many arguments to oppose.

A.B.: There are rules on the classification and declassification of historical monuments, which include criteria.

C.E.: But these criteria were established in 2004 and have not been applied to monuments already on the 1992 list. If you first draw up the list and then establish the criteria on the basis of which a building can be included in the list, I don't think that's a method that can be used to show that we have done a thorough job.

A.B.: On Calea Victoriei, you said that when the doubling of the diametral is finalized, the pedestrian section should be widened. Is there any project or HCGMB in this regard?

C.E.: In the PUZ - Central Area, Calea Victoriei is among the priority pedestrian routes proposed.

A.B.: But this was prior to the PUG, it is no longer in force.

C.E.: The idea was detailed in the PUZ as the Calea Victoriei Cultural Route.

A.B.: But this PUZ is also not in force because it has not been approved.

C.E.: The PUZ for the doubling of the diametrale could not have been extended to include Calea Victoriei. I am relying on the good faith of the public authority and on the young people who I see with such joy using the small fragments of public space in the central area. Sibiu, a city of only 200,000 inhabitants, manages to make the most of the pedestrian walkway in the historic center, I don't understand why a city of 2 million inhabitants, a strong university center, should be deprived of such a path where people can be at ease, and cars - stingless.

A.B.: What should be the relationship between urban planning, heritage protection and society?

C.E.: Town planners need the right information on which to act. When the List of Historical Monuments is far from normality and from its real value, the urban planner's decision is difficult to make and I believe that it is the duty of the city's plans and development strategy to analyze and find the solution of mediation in places where urban interventions conflict with the protection of historical values. In the PUZ - Central Area of 1999 we identified all the fragments where the protected fabric was in conflict with the existing proposals for the amplification of the road infrastructure. There are, roughly, four such areas: on Traian Street, in the Buzești - Berzei area (the fragment of the intersection with Calea Griviței), in Romana Square (at the time the widening of Dacia Boulevard was under discussion) and the last one was on Calea Călărașilor. I participated in the decision in two cases, the one in Buzești - Berzei and Calea Călărașilor. When I did the PUZ Sector 3, I proposed to abandon the project to widen Călărașilor, pointing out that it can operate in a one-way system with Matei Basarab Street. This could not happen until now because Matei Basarab Street was blocked by a building that for a long time could not be expropriated. There is every reason not to intervene aggressively on Calea Călărașilor. I must add that keeping old buildings on the ground cannot be an end in itself. The goal we can aim at can be to contribute to the realization of a pleasant city to live in, where incomes are high and stable, taxes are bearable, public facilities and services are of good quality, the public space is friendly, not only the physical objects that constitute it must be harmonious, but also the behavior of those who use it is important. Sacrificing all these components for the sake of preserving a slightly older building at any cost I count as an attitude that is not in favor of the city as a whole. Emotion based on nostalgia is important, but not enough.

A.B.: Why did you choose to demolish the western front of Buzești and Berzei Streets up to the intersection with Stirbei Voda?

C.E.: I chose to protect Caii Victoriei at the expense of a few buildings that I had to sacrifice on Buzești and Berzei Streets, near the intersection with Calea Griviței. I didn't hesitate, although I didn't do it with joy.

A.B.: Why didn't you choose a variant in which in some parts one side was demolished and in others the other? I'm thinking, for example, of demolishing the front opposite Hala Matache, south of the intersection with Popa Tatu St., and preserving the historical monument (I'm not in the field to judge, but it seemed a better solution)?

C.E.: For me, the front opposite Hala Matache has a greater value, it is compact, it has a certain character and, together with the whole of Popa Tatu street, it is part of a whole of Bucharest architecture with a certain charm. I avoided touching this front. I tried to run as far away as possible from the protected built-up area so that the effects of the intervention would not spread into its depth.

A.B.: What can you tell us about Traian Street?

C.E.: The street is waiting for a decision, I think that we should not worry among ourselves about things that have already happened. The Buzești - Berzei operation has already happened, the PUZ has already produced all its effects. Expropriations have been expropriated and demolition authorizations have been issued and only the houses with monument status are left standing. Now we can still discuss how to relocate the three remaining monument buildings so that they can be integrated into the development of the axis. Returning to Traian Street, solutions must be sought and alternatives must be discussed that are favorable to urban development so that north-south traffic for the eastern half of the city is not concentrated on Magheru, so that there are tangents to the central area, but with the character of Traian Street preserved. Since the inter-war period, this street has been widened and built with this intention. The alternatives must be discussed and prepared through studies and thorough, patient discussions and with the thought of helping the citizens of Bucharest to use the city with shared enjoyment. About the relationship with society I can tell you that it has been evolutionary, in 2006 when the PUZ was approved, OAR Bucharest initiated a debate that did not arouse much interest. Probably nobody believed that the project would be realized. It was only when the buildings were demolished that interest reappeared.

A.B.: In most cases, the City Hall has expropriated only the area needed for the road and sidewalks, how will this problem be solved?

C.E.: From the discussion we had at the Ministry of Development, it was obvious that without a law on urban planning operations that obliges the urban actors involved to cooperate, there is a big risk that everything will fail. A PUZ cannot replace a law. We will try to find a phasing, at the beginning the finalization of the infrastructure, with a period of blocking construction adjacent to it, until the urban operations law comes into force. This law was necessary since 1990, when we inherited over 100 hectares of demolished land. The lack of it has meant that the slums along Bd. Unirii. On the other hand, you can't block the city forever. In France, the building ban could initially last for five years, then it was reduced to three years, and now it's one year. I hope that in a short time this law will be realized.

A.B.: Why should Bd. Gării de Nord extended to Berzei St.?

C.E.: We have to choose between two historic urban structures, both of which have heritage value, at least according to the LMI. We have the houses on Baldovin Pârcălabul and Cameliei Streets, ground floor ground floor+1, and we have the CFR Palace with the North Station Square, the only coherent modern square in Bucharest. The two are in conflict. Between highlighting a landmark moment of interwar Romanian civilization and preserving the memory of the old slums on the edge of the city suggested by the houses on Baldovin Pârcălabul, we had to choose...

A.B.: According to Mrs. Hanna Derer's study, these houses, due to lack of maintenance and improper interventions, no longer preserve enough elements of cultural value to justify their inclusion in the List of Historical Monuments. On the other hand, at the junction with Vulcănescu Street, the monument at 89 Berzei Street should be demolished. In this situation the question is whether it would not be better to keep the length of Bd. Gării Nord and to conform its volumetric end? Why was this option not chosen?

C.E.: One of the aims of the project was to bring the North Station as close as possible to the central area of Bucharest. Bd. Gării de Nord and Bd. Dinicu Golescu ensure the necessary integration of the North Station.

A.B.: What do you propose for the three remaining monuments on Berzei?

C.E.: For Hala Matache, I support the idea of translating it to the alignment of the current Haralambie Botescu St., from the back. This would create a public space in front of the hall that would enhance it. For me. Hala Matache has the vocation of memory of the place and that's all, its image now is the result of the intervention of 1941-1943, the fact that it moves 10 meters does not affect its significance. The buildings at 81 and 89 Berzei St. are relocated south of the Hala Matache, on land owned by the city hall and demolished before 1989. How the relocation will be done is up to the Ministry of Culture.

A.B.: What conclusions can be drawn for the second stage, Uranus?

C.E.: There are some that can be drawn at the institutional level, others of professional experience to be passed on to future generations, and others personal. From a personal point of view, I can say that I am very weary of the way the whole operation has gone and I have reached a kind of weariness. I no longer have the energy to fight for what I think is normal and rational to happen in Romania's capital, which is in fierce competition with other major cities in this part of the world, in a city that has not completed its modernization phase. Even if we don't like it, we must have the realism to recognize that Bucharest does not have the necessary attributes to be a tourist city, but it could be a pleasant place for those who visit it for other reasons. Other are our areas where we can perform well in tourism and where we care too little. Bucharest, Romania's only very large city, must first and foremost play its role as the engine of the national economy. Before the stage of enhancing the historical substance and in order to have the necessary resources to do so, the urban organism must function. In our country, the modernization phase in the central perimeter could be completed with a few small operations, including the doubling of the North-South diameter. I have come across so many absurd situations, misunderstandings, even invective, that I have had enough. During one of the public debates on this subject, a young architect reproached me for repeating the mistake of those who, by building Bulevardul Magheru, spoiled the charm of patriarchal streets such as Pictor Verona Street. He is right, but the question is whether, in order for Romania to have a capital on a par with others in Europe, the realization of Magheru Boulevard was vandalism or would have been a serious mistake if the way things were not done as they were done then. In fact, I note that there is a great lack of confidence in the ability of the current generation of Romanian architects to provide quality architecture for a boulevard, even on the part of some of those who lead the profession. The awards at the last Romanian architecture biennale seem to confirm that Belgium is on the right track in this field or that our architects are working well abroad. I believe that we need to put more energy into building the conditions favorable to the realization of quality architecture rather than to argue over things that have already happened and showing that each of us would have had a better solution. So far, for Uranus, we have not proposed to demolish any more houses. It is true that some owners in the area have asked me why I am not widening. At the moment it is not absolutely necessary. Maybe it won't work very well, it will be a street with 2m sidewalks. I hope that in the end the people of Bucharest and those who make decisions for them will reach that balance which will lead them towards the natural, the rational.

I have not proposed expropriations, also because the necessary procedures would postpone by at least 3-4 years, taking into account the project of the first stage of the Diametrale, the realization of the underground passage, which is the core of the project.

A.B.: What can you tell us about the underpass. Would it have been better if the artery had gone above ground?

C.E.: We thought so too, but there are several urban actors involved in the decision. The technical components of parliament did not give us the go-ahead for the surface solution.

A.B.: Why wouldn't an underground passage in the area of the monuments on the Berzei?

C.E.: Any rational man makes a list of what he has to do and weighs up what he can accomplish. Depending on the resources he has, he prioritizes and gives up some dreams. Putting so much money in there and losing connections to side streets would have been unrealistic.

Interview conducted in June 2011

Constantin Enache - recent comment - November 2011

I think the discussions are going in the wrong direction. Instead of negotiating to save the Via Victory by increasing the area of pedestrian facilities and planted spaces to the detriment of car traffic, taking advantage of the new understanding of the city hall representatives on this subject, they prefer to insist on reducing the roadway on Berzei Street, creating difficulties and additional expenses for the replacement of the large sewer under this street and making all the efforts and costs of expropriations and demolitions so far useless. We could have had in a year Calea Victoriei with a civilized ambience, where pedestrians are at ease, not cars, and a functional Buzești-Berzei Boulevard. Either it is a question of ignorance of the legal procedures and of the time needed to modify a work of this magnitude, or they want to block the works and that's it.

When the world around us changes, it is only natural that we feel a certain apprehension and apprehension, even when the change is accompanied by an improvement. This unease is heightened when the change begins with dramatic gestures, such as the demolition of buildings you have known for years and got used to, and it also brings back unpleasant memories: earthquakes, communism and oppression. Unfortunately, the natural anxiety and concern in the face of structural urban planning operations, which also involve demolitions, are manipulated to block any significant actions that aim to give the city a more vigorous vigor.

The Buzești-Berzei project is described in the various publications of those who want to stop it as an 'outdated project', an 'autistic and dictatorial approach', a 'communist reflex'. I won't respond with more bad words, there is enough circus around us to add another show to it. I prefer to talk on the bright side. There is an obvious growth, especially among young people, of interest in the city, and that is evidence of an infatuation. What my more recent colleagues in urban planning who are proposing substantial changes to the project on the basis of alternative solutions, who are first-timers and without sufficient knowledge of Bucharest, should not lose sight of is that the city is a whole. The proposed alternative solutions do not answer how Calea Victoriei and Magheru Boulevard will be protected from traffic and enhanced.

For those who are less well versed in a field it is a common error to turn relative truths into categorical verdicts. It is strongly asserted that we must stop the attempts to clear and ease traffic in the inner city, that the solution of the future is bypasses. Bypasses are useful and necessary, but we will not build a modern and lively city by relying mainly on bypasses. Bucharest exists not to be bypassed, but is the origin and target of travel. The best possible accessibility remains one of the features sought by all the world's great cities. The future of the city depends on how we manage the balance between accessibility and protection.

We used to be recognized for the measure we put into what we did. I don't know when we lost our balance, but in much of what is going on, this disorientation is evident. Excesses are met with similar, extreme, exaggerated measures. We will forever remain marginal and 'provincial' as long as, instead of correctly assessing our needs and what we need to do to meet them properly, we justify ourselves by what is fashionable in the big cities taken as models. If they stop making underground public parking lots in the central area because they have too many, we feel that we, who have none at all, must stop; if they have exaggerated traffic facilities and are taking measures to reduce the number of cars in the city center, we feel that it is appropriate to stop any attempt to give coherence to the street layout and traffic flow on the edge of the center of Bucharest, leaving traffic to continue to flow, absurdly, on Calea Victoriei and Magheru Boulevard. I plead not for isolation and ignorance, but for discernment and freedom from complexes.

A capital, a metropolis cannot be a patriarchal city. Traffic is embarrassing when in excess, it can cause urban hypertension. Lack of it leads to gangrene, dead tissue. After the land necessary for the realization of the boulevard was obtained with so much difficulty, to propose in its place a tormented alley is a mistake based on the idea that traffic in the city has only bad sides and must be prevented at all costs. Those who describe the proposed boulevard as a 'highway' and give as examples of good practice the High Line in New York forget to point out that it is accompanied along its entire length by a six-lane street, just as they forget that in Paris the Rive Gauche urban revitalization project, which is now under construction and not since the Haussman era, is creating a new boulevard, similar in width (even exceeding it) to the Boulevard des Buzești-Berzei.

Large and very large cities are in fierce competition to attract investor interest. They are the economic engines of the world because they are where the intelligence and creativity that give rise to excellence and profit come together. Only with such an economic engine can Romania muster the resources needed to restore monuments and provide quality public spaces. Otherwise, abandonment and neglect will continue.

The fact that in 2011, a court of law suspended the project started in 2006 cannot be a lie. In fact, it is just one more addition to the mud of our helplessness, one more thing started and not done, one more proof of the lack of protection for investments in Romania. If even public investments are no longer safe and are so easily stopped in full swing, what confidence can private investors have. In the midst of the economic crisis, the slowness and uncertainty with which construction is taking place in Bucharest cannot bring good name to any of us. Architects are among the first to suffer if there is mistrust and uncertainty on the part of investors. When the risk is high, only adventurers who are looking for big and quick profits, nothing sustainable, nothing of quality, take the plunge.

Fanaticism has no place in the thinking on which our judgment must be based. Logic must not be replaced by passion, nor must idealism or utopianism or lucidity be pushed aside. Good intention cannot replace knowledge. We must carefully weigh the relationship between the resources we have and the needs of the city in the order of urgency with which they must be met. The main concern must be to give the city as much vigor and vigor, to increase its resources and use them judiciously, otherwise our past with its vestiges will have no future.

The nostalgic attitude of leaving things as they are, in the patterns to which we have become accustomed and which have entered our memory, the solution of non-intervention and non-construction, while it may be understandable on the part of people of culture with other professional backgrounds and may be considered natural for them, is suicidal on the part of architects. The purpose of our profession is to build, to improve the living environment of the community. Even a medieval castle, in order to be inhabited today, to be lively and not to remain a derelict ruin or a museum-mummy, needs some adaptations, which involve both additions and renunciations, and even more so a city. With the support of our professional organizations, we must advocate not for a standstill and non-construction, but for a framework of laws and rules within which we can design under conditions that allow, even oblige, quality (the law on urban planning operations in public-private partnership, the law on Bucharest and the metropolitan area, development agencies, coordination centres for databases and urban planning, etc.).

*prof. dr. arh. Constantin Enache, University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", Bucharest, author of the PUZ "Dublare diametrala nord-sud. Tronsonul Buzești-Berzei-Vasile Pârvan" (2006) and some PUZ projects for further development of its regulations, currently in the process of being approved