Thematic file

Here and now - Mihai Duțescu

Thematic dossier

Prof. dr. arh.Adrian SPIRESCU recommends
arh. Mihai DUȚESCU

Here and now

Apartment, office and commercial building - Calea Dudești - photo Radu Mălășincu

Adrian Spirescu: Architecture has always superimposed/condensed data about place, beneficiary, architect, tradition. These data come from education/school of architecture and are also present in projects/built work. They constantly converge/aspire towards formal/functional perfection.
M.D.: It's a hard ball you're throwing at me, but I'll try to give an answer as relevant as possible to the way I now relate to architecture.
Why do I say that? Because my relationship with this profession - and, in a broader sense, with its fundamental issues, beyond the actual practice - this relationship, therefore, periodically undergoes nuances. These are due to general changes (professional, socio-economic, legislative context), then to those in my immediate vicinity, superimposed on changes within myself (age, cultural accumulations and interests, pragmatic interests, personal, family priorities, etc.). So, as you can see - and as I am sure you are well aware - we do not remain the same architects from the beginning to the end of our careers. As a matter of fact, I find it hard to understand how some famous architects manage to be consistent with the same principles for years, decades, the same language, without deviating in the slightest from their "own brand" and, above all, without getting bored of this work practiced for big money and in the most predictable way possible.
I don't have a private label. Even when I was a student and had maximum freedom in my projects, I didn't find it interesting - or ethically justified - to self-brand myself.

Apartment building - Voluntari, Ilfov - photo Cosmin Dragomir

Apartment for two families - Chitila, Ilfov - photo Cosmin Dragomir

What's more, I consider "intelligent versatility" a quality in architects, as is the very attribution of a somewhat anonymous character to the project - something totally opposed to "signature architecture" anyway. The works I present here represent about 5% of the total volume (including unbuilt projects - most of them, in fact). Selected would be the ones that worked best for me - both in the sense of design, but especially in the sense of execution. In other words, the ones where, to put it very simply, I got lucky. But I believe that I have the ability (acquired by will, by necessity in the Romanian context) to work coherently in different formulas, more or less congruent between them. A possible common denominator would be honesty - towards the location, towards the client, towards spatial logic, towards functional relations, etc. - but very rarely all these criteria converge towards the perfection you were talking about.

Residential complex - Moților street - photo Radu Mălășincu

Wagon House - Bucharest - photo Radu Mălășincu

As far as I am concerned, so far I haven't achieved even a shred of that perfection, not even in my drawer projects, being prey to thousands of attacks from all sides, which make a project move further and further away from the initial idea as it develops. I hope that this doubting tone, this bitter and rather predictable wisdom that I have arrived at after 15 years of working on my own in Romania, will not discourage anyone who is at the beginning of the road, here and now. Because it is something that is strictly related to the here and now, and that is predominantly my subjective experience.
But with the effort and honesty that I was talking about earlier from each of us, things will certainly change for the better.