Learning architecture in Cluj

Why am I writing?

At the end of this introduction I will tell you to whom I owe the audacity to write this text. Don't read it off the page! In fact, to describe a Faculty of Architecture, or a "school" as we all call it, most of the time, not at one point in time, but by what it has meant throughout its 50-year history, it takes more than one thing. It takes either some guts, as today's young people say, or a collection of more than 2,000 voices, multiplied by the effects they have had on the post-graduation career. How did I get started trying to write and describe? It's simple and complicated at the same time. I am a prisoner of this school! I don't think I'm the only one. Even though in my architectural career I have stepped much more firmly out of the academy, through the projects I've worked on, through professional organizations and what you might call the politics of the profession, public life and architectural activism, the school has probably captured me for good. Yesterday I was reading to students several thoughts from Architecture Matters, by Aaron Betsky. In one he said that if you want to learn, because you always have to learn, then teach others! I have felt imprisoned because I have often felt the need to escape for good, to free myself from a commitment that I can't understand, don't agree with, and perhaps can't fulfill well enough. I have very often felt unable to judge whether what I am doing is right, and from what the education system of which I was a part was showing me, through the many signs it gives you, especially in tables and indicators, that it was not right. It is not good either alone or with others. We are not reaching our targets and there is no way of reaching them. We are always behind, doing what we think, but something else is valued as important, measured and rewarded. In fact, I have begun to believe that there are neither really valid goals, nor methods and, for many reasons, no vision to stick to beyond the details. In short, working at the school of architecture was a constant trial, with partial success. There was also a permanent dissatisfaction that sometimes reached the level of rebellion against an unfair system, against bosses who were primarily interested in themselves, but above all lacked a credible and well communicated broad concept. Education is extraordinarily attractive and captivates young people, who then discover, as in my case, that a system, defined as a mission by the generosity and responsibility to give to others, is populated by very many who offer themselves above all a string of titles in an overly displayed hierarchy. For me it has been 26 years, to this point, in the faculty in Cluj. I know that the official name is Cluj-Napoca, but when I was born it was just Cluj, so, indulge me. And now, you are entitled to wonder why I am also writing on the 50th anniversary of the three architecture schools in Cluj, Iași and Timișoara (alphabetically)? Anyone can write, but especially those who have something to say, I hope. I also hope that more will write, although I don't think they will. I've been invited. Moreover, I have asked a few people who have played important roles, held official positions, to contribute. I gave myself three days, the first to think and the rest to write. I put everything else aside. I must admit that such an attempt is fascinating. I wanted to do it, but I didn't dare to do it on my own initiative. I've written about architectural education before, even in Architecture, Let's Talk About Schools of Architecture, in 2013. I very much enjoyed 2.14 Types of Schools of Architecture, edited by Irina Băncescu, Alexandru Belenyi and Ina Stoian, in 2016, to which I also contributed. It was an extraordinary collage of ideas and visions of people who are significant for the current architectural education in Romania, but unfortunately not part of the same team. They have opinions, they see and they know, but they remain almost every one alone, and sometimes, rarely, in small groups, as of friends and colleagues, the ones who do things on the grass roots as best they can, although the system does not help, does not recognize or even opposes them. Now I will have a chance to try and see what can be done from the position of dean. I am presenting myself as a fresh or rookie dean, because that is what I am. Here's one more reason why I took on this writing. I would have liked my role to be simply to make a collage of texts offered by several of those who have determined the existence and direction of this school of architecture and especially the mood, the atmosphere in which several dozen teachers and several thousand students have worked and lived here all this time. I write because the president of the UAR, Mrs. Ileana Tureanu, wanted the magazine Arhitectura to include in its pages the evolution, difficult to comprehend, of the three schools that are celebrating their anniversary. I am writing because Dana Opincariu, who has tried differently from most of the others who have tried, more intensely, more dedicatedly and more quietly, to make us like the place where we work, has, over all these years, conveyed to me a vision of a possible school. I am still writing because the number has to appear, as I spoke to my friend and chronicler of the Timișoara school, Vlad Gaivoronschi.