On Incompleteness

The Incomplete List

It happened in 1993, when the late professor and architect Peter Derer was director of the Department of Monuments, Ensembles, and Historic Sites, and I was the deputy chief architect of Bucharest, when, one day, he paid a visit to City Hall, bringing with him the List of Historic Monuments in Bucharest. We had known each other for a long time, since 1971; he had introduced me to the field of urban planning when I was a student and he was a faculty member in the Department of Urban Planning, and then, starting in 1978, we were colleagues in the department at what is now the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism.

When he handed over the List, he confided in me that he was aware of its imperfections, but that something had to be done—that the existence of such a form of protection for Bucharest’s old buildings was a matter of urgency, given that the old list of monuments had been revoked in 1977, and that he was certain Romania’s tra