Argument

50, already!

text: Ileana (MURGESCU) TUREANU

If the previous issue of the magazine was a tribute to the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest which, for 130 years, has trained and prepared Romanian architects and urban planners, this issue is dedicated to the three Faculties of Architecture and Urbanism founded in Cluj, Iași and Timișoara, 50 years ago.
Their contribution to the excellence of Romanian architecture is undeniable, their individuality is recognized and the solidity of the training they offer is appreciated both in the country and in all corners of the world where the architects they have trained are active.
The beginning was not easy. I will make a confession about it. On the scale of history, it is an insignificant experience, but on the scale of generations, it is painfully important.
In Romanian architecture, 1970 is "notched in the beam".
In the 1970s, Romania was beginning to peep towards the West and was discovering the market economy, the challenging role of competition and competition, diversity and decentralization. The key to the change of course lay in securing the "cadre pool" and modernizing the education system, which was led by leading intellectuals.
For architecture, the new trend materialized in the creation of Faculties of Architecture in Iași, Cluj and Timișoara, within the framework of the Polytechnic Institutes, with a duration of 3 years. They were opened in the fall of 1970 and benefited from the participation and support of the most valuable practitioners in the area and, sometimes, from Bucharest.
In Timișoara, the faculty was built around the architects Tiberiu Cocheci, Hans Fackelmann, Cristea Miloș and Sorin Gavra; in Cluj, the soul of the new school was the architect Vasile Mitrea, and in Iași the school revolved around the impetuous personality of Nicolae Porumbescu. It is hard to imagine today the enthusiasm and hope that fueled the emergence of the new schools. The current issue of ARHITECTURA tries to help younger readers understand the 1970s phenomenon and the arc over time that it has generated.
But the lack of continuity, the game of "one step forward and two steps back" that haunts us like a curse, caused the experiment to be canceled and, in 1983, the faculties closed.
They were re-created, in a fully developed and complete 6-year education formula, in 1990. On the scale of history, we talk about trends, directions, orientations. But what about the human scale? What do we do with the personal scale, those of us who have a sliver of the scale of history at our disposal?
I find myself in a strange position because, off the cuff and word by word, I have found myself a kind of dinosaur, a matusalemic exhibit. I witnessed and participated in that 1970s moment.
It is 50 years later!
Believe it or not, the calendar says so. And I have an obligation to testify, all the more so as I have the honor of temporarily leading the Union of Architects.
This issue is my deposition.
I was part of the first series of this experiment. We were a generation of trailblazers. For us, the university entrance exam was not given immediately after the Baccalaureate, as was the custom. We took the entrance exam in the fall. That summer, during the summer holidays, at "Mincu", a group of young enthusiastic graduates and still-students coordinated by Nelu Popa, Vlad Calboreanu, Ferenc Echeriu and Romeo Simiraș, organized preparatory courses and gave us free drawing lessons, in order to give a chance to the most unlucky ones.

Also for the first time, the candidates from Bucharest took the exam outdoors, as "plain-air" candidates sat on a grassy dune and drew the recently inaugurated Otopeni Airport.
In the new experiment, after 3 years, you became a conductor-architect (none of us knew what that meant. The irony was that some of the graduates were employed as conductor-architects when they were assigned. All the better!)
After 3 years, the first generation of conductor-architects would take an exam to continue their studies for another 3 years in Bucharest to become architects. During the first years, everyone measured their time and effort as they wished, all of them euphorized by the status of architecture student. The lively years with evenings at Club A, rock festivals and international architecture seminars, study trips all over the country (if you were lucky enough to go with Sanda Voiculescu, you loved monuments all your life) and relevee vacations in the villages marked us and bound us. The grades were only in the "student's notebook" because the real hierarchies were established at the workshop and at the sketch. The atmosphere was friendly and we were all "booing" either to our colleagues or to our sketchboard neighbors. We hadn't heard of competition yet, and I don't know if it was so, but I only remember the cheerfulness of those years.
Just a few months before the 3rd year, it was announced that there would be no more exams and that the transition to the 4th year would be in the "order of the averages" of the first three years. "The 'order of averages' was not necessarily the 'order of values' and we all knew this. Today no one can believe it, but I swear on my heart that we were all in turmoil. It was our first harsh confrontation with injustice. And it scarred us all. But it hit some of them directly: hurt and humiliated, some of them took a different path, went to Fine Arts (we have colleagues who have become international stars in set design, jewelry, textiles, fashion, etc.) or Construction, or went on a wander overseas.
The "conductor-architect" experiment was abandoned in 1983. Many of our colleagues who did not pay enough attention to their "marks in the notebook", but were high up in the real hierarchy, remained "conductor-architects" because of this arbitrary decision. Years later, remedial measures were tried, so that those who insisted on becoming architects had to restart their studies from scratch and did 6 more years of college. The first 3 years were not recognized. "Such is life, but on the scale of history..."
Many of them, although they achieved professionally, remained scarred, disbelieving, skeptical... but, what does it matter on the scale of history?
I cannot end without mentioning our reaction, that of an entire year, united and in solidarity, incredible even for that time. Colleague Rică Marian, a brilliant cartoonist (who collaborated with Pif le Chien) made a banner the size of the entire faculty hall, entitled BARAJUL, in which he drew, in "personalized" poses, each of us and... the related teachers. He's been in the lobby all summer. Just for revenge.
And, also in revenge, we FIRSTs, when we meet in round figures, we do it in the formula we entered college in, not the graduation formula.
In protest!