Physiognomy 100+. BNA conference

On October 24, 2014, within the National Biennale of Architecture (BNA), the round table Romania 100+ "Romania's physiognomy through the architecture of public facilities", organized by Arhitectura magazine, took place. Professors Ana Maria Zahariade, Romeo Belea and Vintilă Mihăilescu were invited to speak at the event.

BNA 2014 Commissioner, Sergiu Nistor, described the approach of the Romania 100+ series of events at the Biennale's launch conference: "First of all, the Biennale is an opportunity to ask ourselves what is happening with the profession, where we are going, where we can hope that the state, the administration, the politicians will help us to carry out this activity. That is why, beyond the exhibition, there are a series of professional conferences. First of all, the conferences of the exhibition-competition sections, but we are also organizing four very special conferences, called Romania 100+, designed to create the framework for an assessment of the built, landscaped and landscape environment of our country, which will soon, in 2018, celebrate 100 years since the establishment of the modern state. We believe that the anniversary threshold must also be crossed with programs and public commissions initiated by the public authorities to mark this moment in terms of architecture and urban planning. The cities we live in, the country we see and appreciate today are, to a large extent, the fruit of such a public commission by the Romanian state after 1918. We hope not to pass into the second century only with small houses, curbs and paving of cobbled roads in the villages and we want to show everyone that we, architects, urban planners, have the technical, cultural and professional capacity to be the partner of the Romanian state in marking this moment. These four Romania 100+ conferences will draw an analysis in four areas of how the past can help us to say that we have something to look forward to and shape the future. We are talking about an analysis on heritage, on public space, an analysis on the production of private and public architecture", explained Sergiu Nistor.

Arhitectura magazine wanted to emphasize the way in which the physiognomy of modern Romania has been marked by the architecture of public facilities, starting with a theoretical perspective on the field presented by Ana Maria Zahariade, continuing with that of the architect Romeo Belea, who offered the privilege of revisiting a major project in the field (the National Theatre in Bucharest) in different professional contexts, half a century apart, and ending with the anthropological perspective presented by Vintilă Mihăilescu on the boundary between public and private space. Ana Maria Zahariade summarized the issues discussed at the round table:

"What does this architectural physiognomy of Romania as seen through its public constructions over these 100 years mean? A physiognomy is a series of defining features that bring together a certain character of a face. In particular, in the public domain, there are two overlapping sketches of this physiognomy: the political physiognomy and the physiognomy of the architect, not the architectural physiognomy, but the architect's physiognomy. In both cases it is a question of choices to go or not to go in certain directions, of ways of problematizing. In these 100 years of Romania's modernization, both physiognomies go through three historical stages: the interwar period, the communist period and the period after 1989.

Without idealizing, the period before the Second World War was one of modernization through alignment with Western Europe, an option that was at odds with another equally important option, the national option and the option of preserving a traditional spirituality. Public order is directed in these directions. They sometimes clash, but things evolve in a certain coherence.

The communist period is also coherent: even then, there was a belief in progress, a dictated progress dealing with the question of representativeness. Public order is not given by free reflection, but by an ideologization in one direction. If before the Second World War the institutional structure of Romania took a constructed form, the constructive activity in this field continued after the war, until it would collapse with the emergence of the House of the People.

And we have the period after 1989 in which there is no policy in the sense of building a representativeness, a desire to do good for the people. The desire of the political to get involved in the built environment almost doesn't exist, or it exists only in punctual moments (for example, Bucharest 2000 or other contests, all with a terrible, limping labor) and there doesn't seem to be any political intelligence about it.

What about the architect? In the first period, the modern-type architect is a new apparition. He tries to build his institution. Which he does (professional organization, rights in society, education, his own culture), quite remarkable, but also with all the natural limitations because it was a construction that was not based on tradition. The 300 architects registered with the Corps of Architects in the early 1930s had risen to 400 before the war. The change of regime came and a liberal practice that had settled down was "nationalized" in 1952, as was the case with architectural education and publications. The liberal architect who had a certain holding is stripped of ownership of the work and the responsibility of his name on the work. The competitive climate disappears, a direct responsibility in creation disappears. Works are subject to an increasingly complicated game of endorsement. For a while there is still the possibility for the architect to build a vision for architecture together with the politician, then it disappears completely. In practice, we are entering a crisis in the profession that is very difficult to recover from after 1989, with politicians who are not interested in architecture and architects who are barely managing to build a climate in which to practice their profession, with very few works and no commissions. The communication between architects and politics is flawed. Of course, architecture has won: we have 8,000 architects who have two major professional organizations, who regularly make a series of declarations of intent, who have a legally regulated field, but where many things are not respected. Politicians do not talk to architects, architects do not know how to talk to politicians. Decisions are taken on a discretionary basis, without discussion in professional circles. Let me finish with something that happened a few years ago. A group of Spanish architects who came to Romania to present how they put the problem of the old city in the context of new architecture and the way in which they are developing a strategy for working together old and new saw Bucharest and said: "What is happening is serious, it was like that in our country after Franco. You don't need money, you don't need architects, you need a cultivated political class". I think we also need cultured architects. It seems to me that the Romanian architect has not recovered something that he lost during the communist period: architectural culture and critical culture. As long as he doesn't recover them, it's hard to ask the political class to be cultivated in this respect."

The Romania 100+ series included the events "Architecture, heritage and the cultural landscape" (Observatorul Urban București, 21.10.2014), "Do you like public spaces?" (Urbanismul, 22.10.2014), "The contribution of 'private' architecture to the identity of public space" (Arhitext, 23.10.10.2014) and "The physiognomy of Romania through the architecture of public facilities" (Arhitectura, 24.10.2014). The 2014 edition of the National Biennale of Architecture was organized by the Union of Romanian Architects in collaboration with the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", Bucharest.