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On architecture and friendship with Dan Sergiu Hanganu

Interview

DE ARCHITECTURA ET DE AMICITIA
with Dan Sergiu HANGANANU

Interview conducted by architect Gabriela TABACU in 2005

From which one can find out how Dan Hanganu missed a glorious military career, how the mysteries of architecture were revealed to him while he was working on his diploma project, how he ended up in Canada and not elsewhere, how a man can live a whole life with the obsession called architecture-above-all-others and how all of this
all this is transformed here into a warm and very vivid memory of Gipsy Porumbescu1.

First, something from a very rich professional biography

He graduated as an architect from the "Ion Mincu" Institute of Architecture in Bucharest in 1961. In 1970, he settled in Canada.
He has worked extensively, a great diversity of architectural programs, over a wide geographical area.
"Architect Dan Sergiu Hanganu's possibilities of expression are folded into the reality of the context containing cultural and site data, which he interprets in the sense of modern architecture. Among his projects are successful restructuring and functional recycling of buildings of architectural heritage, as well as renovations of facades of buildings in various historical centers"2, individual and collective housing, churches, museums, educational institutions, large social and cultural complexes.
He is a member of the Order of Architects of Quebec, the Ontario Association of Architects, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
For various projects and works carried out in Canada and around the world, he has received dozens of awards of excellence, including the Order of Architects of Quebec and Canada awards in 1981, 1984, 1987, 1991, 1991, 1993, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, etc.
His articles and projects have been published in the world's leading architectural magazines. He has realized a series of exhibitions of architectural projects in major exhibition centers in Europe, Asia and America. He has also exhibited on various topics related to art and architecture.
Numerous architectural schools and universities around the world have requested him to lecture on architectural theory and practice.
He has served on more than 30 international evaluation juries in the field.
He is a visiting professor at McGill University in Montreal as well as at the School of Architecture of the University of Montreal.
In 1999 he was nominated for the Prize of Excellence in Romanian Culture, instituted by the Cultural Foundation "Elena Vântu" and received the title of doctor honoris causa of the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", Bucharest.
In 2004 he was elected member of the Romanian Academy.
For the last seven years, he has been invited to be part of the international jury for the evaluation of diploma projects presented by graduate students of this university.
Every year in November, he returns to the "architecture school" and talks to the students about something he finds important from his enormous experience of architectural design.

Then a sketch portrait ...

When you meet him for the first time, what you see first of all are the eyes: dark, innocent, seeming to weigh the world insatiably and with infinite wonder, as if haunted in secret by a restless spirit of searching. Then, the smile: coming from beyond the usual cordiality of circumstance and modeled in the shape of a "U", with arms widely flared. And then, an aura: maybe silver-white hair, maybe something else, hard to put into words, which springs out from a too-fullness of spirit, under the sign of perpetual questioning.
He appears in the doorway, jovial and bonhomie, his imposing figure disguised in loose linen clothes the color of murky water.
He is happy to be "in school", he wants to revisit all sorts of places and people with whom he has memories, he wants to know who is left from his time, what is still being heard about so and so; he is frantic in a serene manner: Moldovan.

... And now the promised story

Gabriela TABACU: I can think of tons of questions. But let's start at the beginning. So, how did the career of one of today's best-known architects, one of the most accomplished architects in the Romanian diaspora, begin? Țucu - because that's the nickname your friends and acquaintances recognize you by - how did you become an architect?
Dan Sergiu HANGANU: How did I become an architect? By chance! My father was military and he wanted to send me to the Military Academy. He told me so: You're in and out of the Military Academy. No problem. But I had an aunt on my mother's side, Rodica Ciobanu, who was an architect. She once told me about architecture. And I liked what she told me. That was a few months before the exam, when I was already preparing for the military academy in math, as my father had told me. After I heard about Architecture, I said, "Let's prepare for Architecture. And I found out that there was a young assistant at the faculty, Paul Georgescu, who was giving lessons, and I went to him to prepare. I met a guy there, Mac Popescu3 - a splendid guy: tall, slim, dark-haired, wearing long, very fashionable in the 60s, and a few others who were also preparing for Architecture, about whom I'll tell you more later. So I went to college. I went in, shall I say, completely innocent. I had no idea!

G.T.: You didn't draw before?
D.S.H.: Very little. Very, very little!

G.T.: So it was pure chance?
D.S.H.: Absolutely! I didn't have that calling at all. I can't say: "Sir, when I was a child, I used to do and tinker, like many of the people you're talking to. Take Mario Botta4, who built houses as a child. None of that! Although I think, on the one hand, a lot of people invent, and on the other hand, it's a job that's a latecomer. As in music, there's no genius at 15. As the old man used to say: When you're 50, the profession begins...

G.T.: Who said that?
D.S.H.: Philip Johnson5. But now I know I couldn't have done anything else. I mean, I realized it's the only thing I know how to do.

G.T.: But from the time you went, innocently as you say, into Architecture until you realized that this was what you were meant to do, it was probably a while. What events during that time actually helped you find your way?
D.S.H.: I'll tell you. I went through school like a goose through water! I wasn't much.

GIPSY

G.T.: It can't be! You know, the librarians at the time - some of them are still at the school - they always talk about you as a very diligent student who spent days in the reading rooms.
D.S.H.: That's another story! If you understand what I mean, you should know that at the end, when I graduated, I went to Industrial. I still can't say why. Industrial, I remember, was Solomon, and you couldn't do much in common with architecture. But one day, I was in the basement - I don't know what I was looking for - and I see a black guy there, with a black, outlaw face, working on a lump of clay. And I'm looking and he says to me: What do you want?

... And now the promised story

Gabriela TABACU: I can think of tons of questions. But let's start at the beginning. So, how did the career of one of today's best-known architects, one of the most accomplished architects in the Romanian diaspora, begin? Țucu - because that's the nickname your friends and acquaintances recognize you by - how did you become an architect?
Dan Sergiu HANGANU: How did I become an architect? By chance! My father was military and he wanted to send me to the Military Academy. He told me so: You're in and out of the Military Academy. No problem. But I had an aunt on my mother's side, Rodica Ciobanu, who was an architect. She once told me about architecture. And I liked what she told me. That was a few months before the exam, when I was already preparing for the military academy in math, as my father had told me. After I heard about Architecture, I said, "Let's prepare for Architecture. And I found out that there was a young assistant at the faculty, Paul Georgescu, who was giving lessons, and I went to him to prepare. I met a guy there, Mac Popescu3 - a splendid guy: tall, slim, dark-haired, wearing long, very fashionable in the 60s, and a few others who were also preparing for Architecture, about whom I'll tell you more later. So I went to college. I went in, shall I say, completely innocent. I had no idea!

G.T.: You didn't draw before?
D.S.H.: Very little. Very, very little!

G.T.: So it was pure chance?
D.S.H.: Absolutely! I had no such calling. I can't say: "Sir, when I was a child, I used to do and tinker, like many of the people you're talking to. Take Mario Botta4, who built houses as a child. None of that! Although I think, on the one hand, a lot of people invent, and on the other hand, it's a job that's a latecomer. As in music, there's no genius at 15. As the old man used to say: When you're 50, the profession begins...

G.T.: Who said that?
D.S.H.: Philip Johnson5. But now I know I couldn't have done anything else. I mean, I realized it's the only thing I know how to do.

G.T.: But from the time you went, innocently as you say, into Architecture until you realized that this was what you were meant to do, it was probably a while. What events during that time actually helped you find your way?
D.S.H.: I'll tell you. I went through school like a goose through water! I wasn't much.

GIPSY

G.T.: It can't be! You know, the librarians at that time - some of them are still at the school - they always talk about you as a very diligent student who spent days in the reading rooms.
D.S.H.: That's another story! If you understand what I mean, you should know that at the end, when I graduated, I went to Industrial. I still can't say why. Industrial, I remember, was Solomon, and you couldn't do much in common with architecture. But one day, I was in the basement - I don't know what I was looking for - and I see a black guy there, with a black, outlaw face, working on a lump of clay. And I'm looking and he says to me: What do you want?

Nothing. He says: Do you like it? - Yes! It was Gipsy Porumbescu. Gipsy hadn't graduated and now he was in the State Circus. And the Circus, which was already under construction, was at the same time his graduation project, and Gipsy was modeling, in the basement, a pole for this project.
And it was like a short circuit. I showed Gipsy what I was doing and, being Gipsy, he immediately threw himself on top of me and took me by the hand and from that moment on, it was like a window opened for me: I started to see what architecture is all about. With Gipsy by my side - gripped, emotional, dedicated, absent, present, whatever you want - because Gipsy was like that all the time, all this amazing contradiction.
And Gipsy was, in fact, the one who mentored me through grad school. I remember at one point, about halfway through, I kind of had a breakdown. Everything was in black, the blackboards, everything! And Gipsy said to me: Go on, get out of it for a while. And for a week, I went to the mountains, I went to the movies....
I think it was then, in my mind, something like the making process. I mean, it was the moment when I realized all the emptiness of my attitude to my craft and, reflexively, the selflessness and devotion, the unbelievable dedication that Gipsy had.
And I graduated. And after I graduated, I went and worked for a while at IPROMET. They sent me to Galati. But there I didn't know how to do even a window detail. But you know what they say: boy, swim! And swim! I stayed a year, I worked... I come back, I see Gipsy again, and at one point he says: I want to go to Suceava. And I got together with some friends: Titu Blebea, Radu Cristescu and Tudor Dumitrașcu - and we left too. To make a long story short, in Suceava, Tudor and I became, in a way, the children of the family. We were like this: there was Gipsy, there was Viki Vaida6, there was Anyuka - Viki's mother - and there was the dog Rebeca. And then there was me and Tudor. That was the family. Morning, evening, night, all the time together. We got up in the morning, went to the office. In the evening, we'd get in the car, go to monasteries, go with Tudor and Gipsy to the villages, look for old folk art, and go through the attics, houses... buy crosses, buy icons, vases... black pottery from Marginea, all kinds of objects from the 1800s, painted eggs, plates, pots... His house was like a museum. And it would be nice if it was a museum now! We'd come home afterwards. Always together. We'd come home, write - I had a diary - and read a lot. It was good! And, I remember, in the office, a colleague, Lattiș, would ask us at seven in the morning, when we arrived: When the hell do you have time to do all this stuff? The guy was about 35; we were 26, 25. Tudor... He's dead now, poor guy. He died first; after that Anyuka died, Rebeca died, Viki died, and three years ago Gipsy died. But this period was so dense, so concentrated, like I can't tell you when I've lived. Concentrated and very marked by Gipsy!

G.T.: But what made Gipsy Porumbescu so special? How did he manage to dominate you so?
D.S.H.: Gipsy! You should see how he was: when I used to go with him to the construction site, for example, he frowned like he frowned his eyebrows and, after explaining something to a worker, he would take his trowel and say: that's how it's done. He'd lock up bricklayers, carpenters, all of them! He knew them all! And I was fascinated by that and it made such an impression on me that I worked in different trades on the building site and then, once I arrived in Canada, I did the same. There are Italians on our construction sites, and when someone tells me that something can't be done, I say: give it to me! And you know what happens? It's like a metamorphosis, like a charm. Suddenly the man becomes your friend, he respects you - you speak his language! You can do what you want!
From this relationship that Gipsy had with people - he was very friendly but also very demanding and very tough - I learned a lot. In general, with Gipsy I learned a lot, but somehow unconsciously, I don't know how, because he was charming like a wizard! He would tell you: look, you do like this, you do like that... and we would stand in front of him like rams and marvel at everything he said, everything he did. It wasn't a profitable venture for the company: we watched and Gipsy worked alone. He'd go over the paper with some black pencils or charcoal pencils, and then he'd come in with a razor and he'd scrape it all off and he'd draw over it again, until at some point he'd break... he'd go through the paper and he'd draw on the board and keep on drawing. And we were...

G.T.: ... fascinated?
D.S.H.: ... like music! We were looking at him, so... lost, Tudor and me. We were doing nothing! We were doing absolutely nothing! And when we drew a little... a little... we were, how can I put it, afraid of him! We drew so badly and with such uncultured lines. And Gipsy would come along, and in half an hour he'd have a painting, a Piranesi full of all sorts of suggestions! And Gipsy... go on, and he was drawing, and he was putting in the swab, and the cap, and they all went in there, and the bench, and the cut; and that's how... that's how he did it! It was no longer a drawing, it was a piece that always went far beyond the framework, even practically, physically! Gipsy never had enough space. And he always, of course, dominated everything around him.
With Gipsy you were everything, you were white or you were black, you were whatever he wanted. And that's how Tudor and I became very close to him. And when we did something stupid - and we did a lot of stupid things - Gipsy, who cared for us, didn't scold us; he would snap at Viki, poor thing; and Viki would cry and take it. And she knew she wasn't guilty. Because Gipsy never scolded us. But Viki did! His whole relationship with Viki was very special. When it was time to draw, he didn't even pay attention to her, even though she was a drawer. As soon as the work was finished, he'd sneak up on her: Viki down, Viki up... He kissed her all the time and it was very sweet, because he was so in love with her. But as soon as he started his job and he concentrated on drawing, Viki became an object. He treated her coldly, indifferently and often even harshly.

G.T.: And she didn't suffer?
D.S.H.: Viki was suffering, poor thing! She cried! She cried until the architecture meeting was over. Then Viki became his fairy again, the woman he loved and worshipped, and he was always, always by her side... Do you know what it was like? They were two Gypsies, two worlds. And she was suffering, crying, complaining to Tudor and me. But we were, how shall I say... much smaller than we really were. And we were so dominated by him! He was the father, he was the director - he had a job: he was the director - he was the boss, he was the boss, he was the boss, he was the brother, he was everything.... We were so subjugated!

G.T.: But, tell me, how do you think Gipsy Porumbescu came to create almost a current in Romanian architecture in the 60s and 80s?
D.S.H.: You know, Ciriani7 says about Frank Lloyd Wright8 that he was an incult. And that he was so uneducated that he had to reinvent everything from the beginning.
G.T.: Well said!
D.S.H.: Very nice, yes! Gipsy was the same. Gipsy invented everything. And in a way he refused everything that didn't interest him. Western culture, everything... Gipsy got himself into a tunnel that I don't know if he couldn't or didn't want to get out of. Gipsy created a universe of his own, a forced, very narrow path. If you see his work, you know what I mean. You know, I remember, when I was still here, Mathew9 gave a lecture in school about contemporary architecture and he said at one point: Porumbescu is one of the greatest artists I've ever met. I thought to myself: Wow, is that so? How could a dreamer of the West like me, at that time, understand such a thing? But when I got there, I realized that it was true, that Gipsy had an enormous force, although it was a channeled force, concentrated on the small, in a way like "Bătuta", this Romanian dance. And if you see, for example, the House of Culture in Suceava, which has meant a lot in Romanian architecture - you know, the hall with the wood carvings - you are overwhelmed first of all by this force, which becomes sensitive... It's true that, after passing through the hall, after passing through the foyer, you begin to feel such a strong visual aversion that you need a piece of free space, a field with nothing! Like I told you before: Gipsy had no measure. In each work - you could write a book about it - there's such an inflation, I don't know if that's the right word, but there's so much stuff, it's dizzying. This man had so much verve and so many resources that, in a way, he was overstepping the mark!

G.T.: But this over-abundance of detail was initiated by Gipsy in a very particular period in the history of architecture, a period when, in the West, modernism, with all its plea against ornament, was still very much alive, even if the theory was beginning to be reconsidered there in its entirety. I mean, if you parallel what Gipsy was working on with what was going on in the West, stylistically speaking, you don't find much in common.
D.S.H.: No, because Gipsy was completely isolated.

G.T.: Isolated in his own world, like Gaudí?
D.S.H.: Yes, if you like, like Gaudí. Gaudi was run over by a streetcar, because he lived absorbed inside it. Exactly the same thing with Gipsy. He was the guy who retreats into his own world until he loses touch with everything else. As someone once said... it's important to know where to stop. You know, Gauguin tied his right hand behind his back and worked with his left. Why was that? Because his right was too skillful. How do you not become a prisoner to the extraordinary skill you have? Gipsy drew extremely beautifully, he drew with both hands and there's a great danger in that: you can fool yourself! And that's exactly what he was doing: he was self-deceiving. Gipsy created his own universe from which he made himself extraordinary ammunition, with which he then bombarded himself and then others. Gipsy was never at peace. Gipsy was constantly at war with someone, with the workers, with the customer, with us, with Viki, with himself, with everyone! He always had something, always had something to prove. He had a marvelous self-confidence. And that seems to me to be one of the greatest qualities of a man who, having talent, wants to impose himself. There are very many talented people who fail in life because they are completely terrified, haunted by a lack of confidence in their own strength.
Gipsy, on the other hand, had such great faith in his destiny and in his power to own the truth, to be in absolute control of the truth, that he often lapsed into blasphemy. I remember that he made a pillar of clay in our kitchen in Suceava - the pillar in the House of Culture in Suceava. And, after a few days, he looks at us with a swagger and says: Now Marcel Breuer10 can kiss my ass! He put himself on a par with all the greats, with God, with anyone! Gipsy was Prometheus! Gipsy was him, him, him and the others! In his speeches in the magazines, he talked about everyone, he cursed one and another. Corbusier11, he'd say, yes, fine! That's what I do! Always, always reporting to him!
I remember the first time when Țuculescu appeared here in Romania, in the exhibition, when we went to see him. And we were discussing what we saw, what he is and what he's like, and Gipsy comes and what do you think he says: What do you think? Better than me! That's it! You know? I mean, the man who judges the world based on him, all the time, all the time, all about him. I heard a lot of things about him afterward that I didn't like; I was sorry! I asked: Gipsy licked the asses of those in power? Yes, he went very far! But not consciously! If you gave Gipsy a chance to do his job, Gipsy would step on anything! Not that he was bad. He never looked where he stepped. He didn't care. He was given the opportunity to make his architectural chops, because he picked up a vocabulary that was fashionable, that was appropriate here at the time.

G.T.: You said before that Gipsy was serene in the world of his expressive obsessions. Such a character can't take anything from anywhere. Things seem to have worked out rather by chance: it was realized that Gipsy's expressionism could serve the ideological discourse of the time very well, so he was given the feu vert to do what he wanted. And he took advantage of it without much effort to fold.
D.S.H.: Exactly! Gipsy saw it as an opportunity to get out in the open, even though he wasn't looking for publicity. And I don't even think he ever realized that he was, in fact, playing the strings of a power that was as you know it was. Gipsy was completely parallel to reality. Let me tell you a story. I was once with him in an audience at a ministry. And we went - Tudor, Gipsy and I - in a Fiat that Tudor and I had bought together: a gray Fiat 600. I took Gipsy to the Ministry gate, we got in and then, as we were leaving, Gipsy rushes to the first big black Volga and says: come on, let's go! Gipsy was out of this world! Well, Gipsy, I say, it's not this car, it's the other one! - Oh, yes!
Yes... He missed a lot of important things. Things of convenience, of politeness, that every man does out of good manners, Gipsy totally missed. They didn't interest him, they didn't interest him at all! And that's why it seems to me that the moment he was offered this vehicle, on which he saddled like a white horse, the rest didn't interest him. That he was serving a bad cause or that he was allied with the dictatorship or simply that he didn't care! That's why I say he's hard to condemn.

G.T.: That's very debatable! Anyway, Gipsy was also much contested by the guild, wasn't he?
D.S.H.: Very controversial! A lot of people tried to stop him and, if you want, it's easy to understand why: he was bothering a lot of people, precisely by his behavior. He was the center of the world. Gipsy was the man in the center and everything revolved around him. He wasn't consciously aggressive, but he was very aggressive. He wasn't bad, I've told you, but he did a lot of damage. He was a man of the soul, very generous, extraordinary! He'd give anything, even what he didn't have! Do you understand? Very generous... he never had any money. He never had anything, you know? He gave everything, but he asked for so much, people found him annoying. He was like that. He was a guy that, like I said, you either loved him or you didn't. And everything he did - painting, because he loved to paint very much, music - he was a music lover - and so on, everything he did was really adjacent to one purpose: his architecture. He had almost no interests that were not connected in one way or another with what he was doing: his architecture.

G.T.: The discussion in moral terms could be very long. But I was referring to the fact that he was stylistically challenged, pure and simple! Because he was doing architecture with nationalist references, at a time when the international style was already fully accepted in the West, and when your generation was striving to be able to produce here at least a breeze of change in the general expressiveness of architecture, if only because it might have been a sign that East and West - worlds then disjointed - could communicate at least in the world of forms. But that was not all, of course. And the modernists, the pro-modernists, didn't understand under those conditions that someone could make architecture with popular cutouts out of conviction, not on commission, at a time when there were, at least in terms of spatial principles and language, Le Corbusier, Mies, Neutra and then Nervi, Fuller, etc.12
D.S.H.: Actually, do you know what it was like? Gipsy had created a vocabulary of his own, completely detached from all the currents and influences that were circulating at the time, a vocabulary appreciated by some, contested by others. A lot of people copied him: all sorts of saps, all sorts of curved balconies, a simplistic, superficial formalism. I remember that in Suceava I also built the headquarters of the Electricity Company, which of course is a gipsy with all sorts of things. But much less than I could! At that time I was busy with Piaget, with philosophy, I read a lot and tried to detach myself. But Gipsy was too loud, too present, especially for us who could follow him step by step.
And even though he had this obsession with decoration, you could say that he was imposing! Apart from being a manipulator of interior space. If you look, his designs, his houses are not beautiful in the sense of proportion, in the sense of the big picture. Gipsy grabs you when you walk in. Gipsy was a creator of negative spaces. Very Romanian. Gipsy is mesmerizing when you are inside, when you are in the space, when you start to consume it, when you go up, down, walk up the stairs, when you have the whole perspective open, when you are close to the detail, until, at a certain point, as I said before, it becomes suffocating. At some point, you want to get out! This baroque, often unnecessary exuberance, with elements coming in and enveloping you, assaults you like dust in the eye. His character was like that! Gipsy took you by the hand, held you, looked at you, penetrated you with his eyes, so that you could participate with him, there, although you participated in the lodge, invited, you didn't participate in the work with Gipsy! Only he did everything, he held you in place, but he held you with something, I don't know what he held you with. He had charisma, you know?

G.T.: What a character, what a personality!
D.S.H.: Yes, very interesting, very interesting! This strength that he had at work and, on the other hand, a certain self-assuredness, a certain versatility, I think that helped him a lot to succeed at that time.
And there was something Gipsy about him! He was terribly impudent, he had phases when he talked gibberish, he said all sorts of things, he wanted to impress, he wanted to please, to win you over at any price. He sometimes had a very funny fake laugh, which I think he was trying to hide something that wasn't right.
And he had all sorts of original ideas: he wore his tie like this, like this, like this, no knot. And it was all, obviously, bluster, it all seemed deliberate, his whole presentation - a sort of Berthold Brecht, if you like. He was like an actor who was always taking a part, always taking the spotlight. He would do anything for it.
And we, of course, because we felt terribly dominated, we looked for his faults, we tried to counter him in some way, especially since we knew about modernism and all that. And we found fault with him: that he's not honest, that he does one thing and says another, and that you can't see in his way of doing architecture what the function is. You know, Gipsy never did functionalist architecture. Absolutely not, absolutely not! He had a plot on one side, he was doing something else inside, it was all like a dream, how shall I say, a narrative.

G.T.: Was he an expressionist?
D.S.H.: Yes, maybe. I don't know where you can put Gipsy, that he built his own vocabulary. I haven't found, and I've searched the world a lot to see if there are others like him. There aren't! I like Plecnik13 very much, I like Gaudí14 very much, Jujol15 has a certain charm too, he's Catalan and he has, likewise, an inflation of detail and poetry, he's even more lyrical than Gaudí, if you like. But Gipsy was an enormous pot that was always boiling and steaming, and all sorts of wonders came out of it!
And he stayed like that until the end, that's why I say it's hard to judge him, because he was fundamentally like that! Thirty years later, when I came on the jury for Bucharest 2000 and I was here with Sarah Topelson, who was the president of the International Union of Architects, I went to Gipsy's in Suceava and I saw Gipsy taking Sarah by the shoulders, the way he took us, and he didn't let this woman go until he had seen everything he wanted to show her: in the church, how you go in, how you go down, to make you small, to make you bend down, what that perspective means, what the East means... And you know what she said to me afterwards: "Sir, this guy makes you dizzy, he gets inside your head, he gets inside you! That was Gipsy!

G.T.: But you, who had come from school, who had seen what was going on in the world in magazines, how did you manage to come to terms with his way of doing architecture?
D.S.H.: Yes. I remember that I had come to Suceava with these echoes from school, with constructivism, sincerity of expression, what's on the facade is also inside, etc. Gipsy was totally different. With his world of Goya, of black birds that invaded and haunted everything, with his stories, his Marginea pottery, his Voronezh, his saints, his popular decoupage, all mixed together, he managed to subjugate us! And there was something else that I've already mentioned: it was his enormous ability to draw, to draw in small, with which he again overwhelmed us. If you look closely at the houses that Gipsy made, it's always the detail that dominates. I know at one point I suddenly thought to myself: My God, what different universes. And I realize very well now, after thirty-something years, that it influenced me so much by its force that it took me a long time, consciously, to detach myself from the obsession with detail. On the other hand, the relationships of space, the flowing, interlocking space, for that I've always been very indebted to him! I am told that I make interesting spaces, that my spaces are very difficult to film. Many critics say that my itineraries are really hard to photograph. That comes, somehow, from Gipsy's spaces, always diagonal, with their dynamic views, their surprise, their transparency. But I tried very hard to keep away from the tyrannical subjugation of detail. Although I am told, however, that I drive them all pretty crazy myself! So this man set me on a certain line. He gave me a lot! When I left at one point, suffocated.

G.T.: So you reached your saturation point?
D.S.H.: Yes, yes, sure. You know the story of Brâncuși and Rodin. You know that nothing grows in the shade of an oak! Gipsy suffocates everything! At a certain point, Tudor rebelled, he couldn't stand it anymore. He was an architect made by his father. Poor Tudor was no architect, he was an artist! He wanted to get out from under Gipsy's wing, because everything in architecture seemed less interesting to him. I seemed to be the architect because I seemed more sensitive to Gipsy's speech. That's why Gipsy was more inclined toward me, because I was sort of marching.

G.T.: Yes, I see! And how did you break away?
D.S.H.: I left! From the day I left, Gipsy stopped talking to me.

G.T.: Did he mind you leaving?
D.S.H.: I don't think you could call it upset! But, passionate as he was, I think he suffered a lot. Gipsy was never angry, Gipsy was never angry with me. Gipsy never reproached me! Never! I'd see her eyebrows droop like that, and it'd get all black. But he never reproached me for anything and never showed me anything that looked like he resented me. When I came for Bucharest 2000, I took a trip to Suceava with all the jury members. Serban Cantacuzino was there from London. We went to Gipsy, as I was saying. Gipsy treated me as if nothing had happened! He reminded me of all sorts of things: Remember that bank we made together? Remember all the pottery from Marginea? Everything I collected! And we went together to Moldovița and we lit two candles on the porch: one for Viki, one for Tudor. That's why I say Gipsy didn't mind.

G.T.: Maybe he just missed you. After all, you were almost like a son to him.
D.S.H.: That's right! That's what I thought! Although all the letters they sent me from Suceava were written by Viki. And Viki wrote to me until the day before I came. I had invited them both to Montreal: come to us, I'll pay your way, everything. Viki wrote back: "I'm very ill, I can't... Gipsy never wrote!

G.T.: He was probably very hurt by this rupture, But he should have known that this is a natural relationship between master and disciple. At some point, the disciple breaks away. He has to detach, otherwise he falls into mannerism, becomes mimetic. He has to leave to find his own way. Did he not understand that?
D.S.H.: Yes, but since he was such a passionate man, he saw my leaving as a kind of betrayal.

CANADA

G.T.: I won't ask you why you left the country. But how did you choose Canada, how did you get there?
D.S.H.: I finished school in '61, that was in '70. So, I was 10 years old when I had finished school, I had done something, I had worked, I had been to Suceava with Gipsy, I had learned a lot. Then I worked at the Chamber of Commerce for two years. In fact, I confess now that I worked at the Chamber of Commerce precisely with the idea of getting a service passport, so that when I applied for a tourist passport it would be approved. It was one of the few possible ways to get a passport. Then from there I had the opportunity to travel. I went to France, Germany, Morocco, so I saw. My friends had already left: Vol Pastia had left, Nichi had left.

G.T.: Nichi who?
D.S.H.: Nichi Perianu. Nichi Perianu was Doicescu's assistant. He had left. Vol Pastia, Doicescu's assistant, had left. I was also an assistant at Doicescu16 and I left too.

G.T.: How so? All his assistants left? What are we to make of that?
D.S.H.: He had a good hand! Why? Doicescu was a charmer, he spoke nicely and always told you charming stories about the places he traveled, he aroused your curiosity. But beyond curiosity there was also a kind of herd spirit. Everybody believes that if friends move in a certain direction, that's where happiness comes from. And then, I think, yes, there was the desire to really do the job. I had a team in school, with four boys who were my students: Radu Vincentz, Mihai Plăeșu, Petre Marinescu and Vladimir Slavu. We all decided to leave. And we started to make plans, and our plans revolved around UN statistics. At that time, Canada was second only to America - the country with the highest gross product and per capita income. It was a very good country. And we did some calculations, what to choose, between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and America - Canada being, in fact, the country that was the most launched in construction.

G.T.: So you targeted Canada right from the start?
D.S.H.: Of course! And off we went. We stopped in Paris. And in Paris, when I arrived, I applied for both Canada and America. I was accepted for both and I chose Canada. So we went through Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, France. Our intention was clear from the beginning: keep working - we had already won a few competitions - and go to Canada one by one because it's the country that ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta... But they didn't come. They stayed in Paris. Radu Vincentz stopped in Paris, Petrache Marinescu also in Paris.
My plan had been simple: wherever I went on delegation, I would leave some money and I would also leave magazines in which I had published projects, so that, once I got there, I would have something to start from. I left the money with Perianu and the guys who were already there and had no money. I'll tell you how we collected it: in delegations we went to hotels that included breakfast. We ate once a day and goodbye! That way we didn't spend the money we had, the per diem. So that was that. That's how I ended up in Canada, the new country, the country that needed construction and the country that, at that time - in Toronto, where I arrived - had the highest percentage of construction per capita in the world. They were building like crazy! But what I didn't realize at the time was that by the time you start building, the projects are already done! So when I got there, there was a lot of building going on, but the projects were done. So, anyway, I had work, I found work, but I sat there in an architectural office and I kind of drew everything. You know, like every apprenticeship. I mean, you walk into an office and you start at the end.
And I remember, when I left Paris and I went to Toronto, I realized that Toronto was actually a completely different level of city, an uninspiring city, which I felt like a prison. After a year, I went to Montreal. Montreal was a, you see, a Latin city, but after the crisis of October 1970, it had already gone into a kind of decline. So I arrived in Montreal after its heyday.

G.T.: So you didn't come at a good time?
D.S.H.: No! And from then until now, Montreal is stagnant because of the political class and separatism. And I realized that all the time, in this period of settling in, where I was starting to launch a little bit, all the time I was under the influence of Gipsy. I mean, I couldn't really open up and really become myself in what I was doing.

G.T.: And yet, you managed to be yourself in the end, and not Gipsy's stylistic doppelganger on Canadian soil. How did you do it?
D.S.H.: I don't know. Everyone has their own way. I'm not necessarily very cool. I'm looking left and right. Obviously you go somewhere and you see a world. I stayed in Paris, I saw a world. I went to Canada - North America - it's a world! You remember your own, you make comparisons all the time, even if you don't want to. I'll give you two interesting examples: I built a church east of Montreal for the Saint Benoît du Lac Monastery - a Catholic Benedictine monastery. And I went there and I looked at them - the Catholics - and I thought: I, an Orthodox, look at you from the outside and only I can see you as you really are. After five years of work and many meetings on Catholic doctrine and liturgy - I was always talking to one of their oblates who had worked with Marcel Breuer - after five years of trying to isolate Orthodoxy within myself and to find the best expression of the Catholic space (how beautifully Blaga speaks of this!), I was told at one point: Sir, you - on vous aime beaucoup - you bring us something of Byzantine mysticism! And I have always been careful not to "Byzantineize" something, and look, in the end I did it! Do you understand?
After that, I built a museum in Montreal. And at the opening - well, there was a big celebration - I was introduced to an art critic from France: Monsieur Hanganu, Monsieur Cutare... I didn't say a word, not a word, so that he could see I had an accent or something. And this man looks at me, looks at the building and says: Monsieur, vous n'etez pas d'ici. - How so? I say. - It's obvious from your architecture! You're not from here!

G.T.: How did he know that? What did he look at? The spaces?
D.S.H.: He looked at the museum! Andrea Branzi, who is now a very good friend of mine, when he came to Montreal and I met him, he comes into the office, looks at me and says: You weren't born here! And I don't think it's the figure itself! It's something beyond that. I mean, there's somewhere, if you like, in all this development, in everything you do, there's something that's beyond you, there's something you have no control over, and I think it's something to do with where you were born, with what you carry inside you. You carry within you, very deep down, a kind of stamp of where you came into the world, something that comes through in everything you do. I've tried to get rid of it, I've tried to tone it down, but it still comes out somewhere. And, very interestingly, a lot of people there, a lot of people told me: I chose you because you have a different understanding of space and time. It shows that you are European, it shows that you have something different. Your culture is different, your understanding of history is different, your understanding of the role of history, your knowledge of history, your attitude, everything is different. And obviously, when you translate that into shapes and spaces, well, the roots are probably felt. It can't be otherwise! No other way! I think that's also why I was successful over time, because I showed them something there that they didn't have!

G.T.: What was it like adapting to a completely different culture, a completely different world?
D.S.H.: The difference, the difference between one world and another can be very traumatic. You are always questioning yourself. I will never want, and I say this very sincerely, to identify myself with that culture. Although there are many similarities, I never wanted to identify myself. And that's what I realized about 3-4 years ago: you don't want to, you can't! It's a resistance like that to baseball, to American football, to all sorts of things that are not your own and to which you always have reservations. You can't assimilate them! I think that actually helped me a lot!

G.T.: What role do you feel school has played in everything you've achieved?
D.S.H.: I've already told you how much I benefited from the classical education that school gave me, with the Greeks, the Romans, the Renaissance, the Baroque. All my houses are structured in base, field, cornice. In all of them, no matter how modern, you read that! And certainly, in particular, what I learned from Gipsy, his influence in the manipulation of space, of proportions, was fundamental! I mean, there is, somewhere, a continuity from which I think you can identify the place where you were born, the culture you were nourished by, and then, of course, the education you got from the place where you were formed - school.

G.T.: If we were to draw a conclusion...

D.S.H.: If we were to draw conclusions, I became an architect by chance. It was first my aunt - who showed me the way - and then Gipsy - who actually taught me what architecture is. If it hadn't been for Gipsy, I would have remained very much a normal person and I wouldn't have struggled. But he gave me, you know, a sort of virus, as my girls say. I don't know.
You see what it means to be a teacher, a mentor. A teacher is the one who transmits to his students precisely this dedication, this lack of indifference to the subject. That's a double-edged sword. It's kind of sad, in a way, in all this history, you know?
I'll tell you another short story to finish: I get home in the evening and we're at dinner, the girls and me. Anca's making dinner and the girls start talking about what they did at school. At one point, one of them says to the other: "Can't you see they don't listen to you? I look at them... and in my head there are still spaces and plans and... I look at them and... I don't see them! How can you detach yourself from all this, what architecture is really about? You can't! And you come home and you bring them into the house, and you bring them into the bed, and you bring them into the bathroom... And it's not right... because at some point, you get so addicted. You live with it, you live for it, and nothing can help you get off... Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! But I'm afraid there is no way out....

Țucu Hanganu tells a concentrated story, absorbed in himself, navigating in an ocean of memories that is all his. From time to time he scrutinizes me with his eyes and asks me if I understand: he wants to be sure that the message reaches me whole and accurate. It seems like he could talk like this for days. A smoothness has settled on his face, a peace that makes you realize that his wager with architecture, however difficult it may have been, has already been won by the odds. In fact, he has long since stopped looking for a way out of the labyrinth: he is a willing prisoner in the world of forms and symbols to which he has dedicated himself - the safe place where he feels truly at home.

NOTES

1. Nicolae Porumbesu (1919-1997) - prolific Romanian architect and urban planner, with a very personal, nationalist orientation.
2. Laudatio Dan Sergiu Hanganu - award ceremony of the title of doctor honoris causa of the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu" Bucharest, 1999.
3. Emil Barbu Popescu - known as Mac -, architect, rector of the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu" Bucharest, 2000-2008, president of the university since 2008.
4. Mario Botta - famous contemporary Swiss architect (b. April 1, 1943, Mendrisio).
5. Philip Johnson - American architect, landscape architect, theorist and architectural historian (1906-2005).
6. Maria Vaida Porumbescu - architect, wife of Gipsy Porumbescu.
7. Henri Ciriani - contemporary French architect of Peruvian origin (b. 1936 - Lima).
8. Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) - American architect, central figure of the modern movement.
9. Sir Robert Hogg Matthew (1906-1975) - British functionalist architect.
10. Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) - Hungarian-born American architect, promoter of modernism, with outstanding achievements in interior design.
11. Charles Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965) - French architect, urban planner, designer and architectural theorist of Swiss origin, a fundamental figure in world culture, who made decisive contributions to the establishment of modernism and functionalism in early 20th century Europe.
12. Innovative architects of the 20th century.
13. Josip Plecnik (1872-1957) - Yugoslav architect of expressionist orientation.
14. Antoni Gaudi Y Cornet (1852-1926) - highly original Spanish architect, advocating a nationalist expression of architecture.
15. Josep Maria Jujol i Gibert (1879-1949) - Spanish architect, disciple and collaborator of Gaudi.
16. Octav Doicescu (1902-1981) - well-known Romanian architect.