MODERNITY AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY 2011-2012 ASSIGNMENT - ABSTRACT LAMBRACHE CALIN GABRIEL

HOME AFTER COMMUNISM

APPROPRIATION IN THE LARGE RESIDENTIAL ENSEMBLES OF THE COMMUNIST ERA ROMANIAN CASE

I have chosen this topic as it relates to more of the suggested topic while at the same time driving the discussion towards a specific subject. The suggested topics I am referring to is Modernity in context and also Migration and architecture. What I would like to discuss is not the manifestation of modernity in a certain context but how people related to this modernity and the culture it generated. The fact that the inhabitants occupied this new environment in the context of a displacement policy of the political regime generates two different types of appropriation: one specific to the communist era and one specific to present times. These two are totally different and can be seen as mirrors of the social problems that characterize these certain periods. In the communist era large neighborhoods with blocks of flats were constructed in order to house all the displaced brought to the city as the much needed manpower for building the new state. They were designed using modernist principles and were supposed to offer all the modern day comfort. What initially was seen by the displaced as a desirable dwelling typology (as portrayed even by those opposing the regime) quickly started to show the lack of consideration towards the lifestyle of the people they were addressed to. Thus the appropriation of their new houses took on a radical shape in terms of use and physical change. Because of the scale of this displacement this appropriation issue strongly influenced the Romanian urban culture. The alterations that occurred were often ingenious, often hilarious and often just sad but nevertheless interesting and only recently they started to find their way into Romanian cultural concerns. And besides literature, which was the one that treated this subject in more depth, architecture also started to tackle this topic. You can see the preoccupation regarding the subject in all the arts but maybe the most striking is the wave of Romanian films that took of a few years ago and managed to portray a very lively and very powerful image of the peoples struggle to resist or find a compromise between their culture and the brutally imposed one. After communism fell and new economic and social relations emerged the peoples relation to the existing built environment changed dramatically both in terms of use and also physical change. Now

people had to deal with the leftovers of a system that didnt function anymore. They had to change again the notion of home, partly by trying to recover what communism tried to erase, and partly looking towards the western past they missed out and also to the present. As an illustration of the mentioned state of things, for the communist era an example of this bizarre appropriation would be the use of the roof terraces to hang the clothes out to dry or the raising of livestock in the garages situated in the public space between the buildings. For the present day situation we could mention the individual rehabilitation of each apartment according to every persons need, budget, and taste. So, what results is an unorganized display of materials, styles and colors on the same facade. In terms of use the most common example of todays alteration is the appearance of small shops on the ground floor of the blocks as a response to the lack of amenities in the area. These are just a few easy to read examples but this appropriation took on a much more complex and shape and what is interesting to see is how it affected Romanian culture. One example of that complexity is, in the case of present times, the multiple levels on which appropriation occurs, like the use of the new media and technology that opened up new possibilities. Also one of my concerns is inscribing this type of reaction in an international context and compare it to other similar cases. It would be interesting to see the types of appropriation that appeared in other former communist countries and also how that type of appropriation drove their culture towards what it is today. What I hope to achieve by doing this study is to see how this appropriation influenced Romanian culture and try to map the good and bad things that start to cluster more and more. By comparing to other cases and seeing how they took advantage of their newly formed culture I hope I can set some guidelines for taking advantage of an often misjudged legacy.