2017 SAH Annual Conference

6/6/16, 12:30 PM

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Title: Historical Constructions of the User in the Romanian Socialist Apartment, 1968-1989

Abstract No.

0721

Title

Historical Constructions of the User in the Romanian Socialist Apartment, 1968-1989

Abstract

In the context of profound standardization, the golden age of state housing construction in
Romania of the 60s and 70s, generated a built environment that became the research terrain for the
outstanding interdisciplinary research collaboration between architecture and sociology in mid 70s
and early 80s. In 1976 this partnership, which was rooted into an ongoing intellectual partnership
between sociology and architecture, and sanctioned by the communist system from its beginnings,
was finally embedded in what was at the time the motherboard of standardized housing design and
architecture, the Romanian Design Institute of Standardized Constructions. The housing design
production and architecture within this institute was partly the outcome of post-occupancy empirical
sociological inquiry. Architects and historians alike often neglect this intellectual partnership through
which professionals involved in housing production attempted to understand residents way of
dwelling, housing aspirations, interior housing unit adaptations and space appropriations and at a
bigger scale, their demographic structure of families, migration, and others factors of urbanization.
The historical investigation I propose here would unravel the ways in which throughout the socialist
period in Romania, the development of the architecture profession must be also comprehended
through the ways in which the idea of the user was constructed and the way the user as resident,
inhabitant and citizen, participated directly or indirectly in the design and construction of housing
neighborhoods. In this paper I argue that during late socialism, the user was not just a fixed,
institutionally created entity, whose actions were determined by the built environment and controlled
by a rigid political system. The users interventions, space adaptations, space negotiations were
recovered by the sociological and architectural intellectual partnership and re-inscribed in the
practice of architecture and housing production of the early 80s due to the interdisciplinary nature of
the state architectural institutions.

Permission

Yes

Affiliations

(1) UC Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

Authors

Ioana Chinan () Presenting

Author
information

Email address
Author
gioanela@yahoo.com
1

Alt email

Cell phone

Mailing address

ioanachinan1678@berkeley.edu

5106463875

1740 Arch St.

Berkeley, CA
94709

Author
2
Categories

Preserving and Repurposing Social Housing: Pitfalls and Promises

Declaration

Yes

CV

IOANA CHINAN-RESUME-05.31.2016.pdf

CV2

IOANA CHINAN-RESUME-05.31.2016.pdf

Number of

0.

https://sah.conference-services.net/abstracts.asp?sessionID={FEFB6}&action=finish&current=31182&abstractID=1006304&language=en-uk

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2017 SAH Annual Conference

6/6/16, 12:30 PM

commitments

Contact us if you have a problem or wish to withdraw a submission: chiggins@sah.org

https://sah.conference-services.net/abstracts.asp?sessionID={FEFB6}&action=finish&current=31182&abstractID=1006304&language=en-uk

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