Bucharest Declaration of the Romanian Order of Architects

The Order's declarations are instruments of its policy for architecture. They are firm, concise forms of expression, which periodically point out in the public space the state of architecture and the architectural profession, which are of public interest. These statements have an imperative character and operate with statements that are based on verifiable findings and always direct the partners in society to whom they are addressed. In all these statements, architects offer their contribution, their support for the improvement of the environment in which their profession is practiced, but in general they demand that those in power and, indeed, in public responsibility, should act on these responsibilities for the benefit of architecture. The statements are linked to events that bring together representatives of the profession, who thus adopt and legitimize the manifesto text.

The OAR has issued several declarations in recent years. The Sibiu Declaration, launched in 2007, referred to the still unresolved situation of heritage threatened by the Roșia Montană mining project. The RAO supported the efforts to have the cultural landscape of Roșia Montană included on the UNESCO tentative list for World Heritage. This was followed, in 2008, by the Cluj Declaration entitled "S.O.S. urban development in Romania", which, reacting to the effects of the development phenomena during the real estate boom and the construction boom, called for the commitment of all actors involved in a substantial change.

The declaration was signed in acceptance of its text by the current Prime Minister of the Romanian Government, then Mayor of Cluj-Napoca, and by the then Minister of Public Works. In this way we laid the foundations for an engaging form of dialog with the representatives of the administrations, on whose actions depend the changes we want. In 2009 there was the Brașov Declaration "for an architecture policy in Romania", arguing the need for such a policy in our country and setting out its objectives. Then there was the Background Study for an architecture policy in Romania, entitled "Architect in Romania", which was presented in Iasi in 2010. Also in the same year, in Bucharest, on the occasion of the National Conference of the Romanian Architects' Organization, the "Policy for Architecture in Romania 2010-2015" was launched, a fundamental document in the course of the Order, which was offered to the governments as a basis for the adoption of such a policy.

The Bucharest Declaration of the OAR is a message that synthesizes the results of the analysis of the current state of the quality of the built space in Romania in close connection with the legislative framework, current practices, existing policies or rather their absence. Noting this state of affairs, we address an imperative request to governments and administrative structures at all levels to act immediately and substantially in a new direction for which principles and models exist and for which architects offer their support and contributions through the RVO. The strategy adopted at the Extraordinary National Conference in Bucharest on November 26 and 27, 2011, specifies the directions of action that we consider to be priorities to fundamentally reconsider the way we build in our country. Going into the details, the evidence that we emphasize is related to the unsatisfactory state of the built environment in Romania, whether we are referring to existing buildings, heritage buildings, or to the way in which new buildings are built in general. It is, unfortunately, obvious that architecture is not understood and not cultivated and that building legislation in Romania perpetuates fundamental confusion about the role of the architect and the meaning of architecture itself.

In the presentation I made at the National Conference, I illustrated the perception of architecture and its quality with some graphical representations. Architecture is neither recognized as having a fundamental role in the quality of life nor as an important value in the national economy, which is evident in the way it is treated in legislation and in the practice of public investments and acts of urban management and administration of localities. The way in which public procurement is carried out and the general lack of quality of public procurement are indicative of this. Public consultation for urban development and major public projects is another completely unsatisfactory aspect of the way in which development processes are taking place in Romania. For these reasons, we call on the government to recognize the importance of architecture and to adopt a policy for architecture in Romania, for which, although they have promised to collaborate with the OAR, they have not started concrete activities. We call for the legalization of architectural competitions as a unique tool for the realization of projects for public investments. The campaign of competitions generated by the OHR in 2010 and 2011 continues to provide arguments for such a decision. The concise text of the statement tries to capture the fundamental problems and the fact that the Order is ready to work with state institutions to solve them.

I would not conclude this presentation without returning to what I consider to be a great error in the appreciation of architecture, which is reflected in public perception, in legislative texts and, unfortunately, even in the way in which some architects consider the built environment to consist of constructions of which only some, the exceptional, very few, have the status of architecture. This is how projects have come to have a component referred to in the legislation as the 'architectural part', and in the same way some architects consider that their role is to produce drawings which constitute this part of the documentation. If the Romanian society will not understand everything that is built as architecture, having different levels of quality and will not be able to distinguish the quality of architecture, the architect's role will remain the self-assumed one and not the one that should be entrusted to him by the society, in the public interest. Good quality architecture should become a common desideratum like all others that are valued as having a role in the quality of life.