Marginalia.

Limits within the Urban Realm 61

Porosity and Collisions.

About Bucharest and its Limits

Ștefan Ghenciulescu
PhD, Associate Professor, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania
sghenciulescu@gmail.com

Keywords: Bucharest; porosity; co-presence; superposition; phenomenal transparency; urban devel-

opment; South-Eastern Europe; public space

Introduction

Bucharest is a city of impure limits. This is not only the case of its outskirts, like in most cities
today, but also of the city center, where each hundred meters walk brings forth high buildings
next to small buildings, old ones next to new ones, intense centrality mixed with the traits of
the periphery. Different urban orders seem to collide everywhere, poverty and prosperity are
juxtaposed.
This paper aims to show that superposition, collision and ubiquitous co-presence are not merely
the result of recent phenomena, but rather intrinsic to the city’s history. In addition to the large-
scale territorial mash-up, I will try to zoom-in and bring into discussion the blurring of limits at
the level of the urban fabric. I am stating that, before the instauration of the totalitarian regime in
1947 and the beginning of a new paradigm, Bucharest developed as a city whose borders between
the public and the private, between the interior and the exterior space were rather soft. Instead of
the clearly demarcated public areas and continuous fronts of the Western city, what is prevalent
here is a sort of porosity, a slow and mediated transition between realms. Limits become places — a
trans-stylistic phenomenon that can be seen in various shapes and levels of complexity throughout
its entire modern history. I shall use the term “transparency” to describe and analyze this quality, a
concept invented by György Kepes and developed by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky.
During the socialist period, collision became a fundamental trait of the urban development:
juxtaposition was no longer managed through negotiation between the public and the private
spheres, typical of the liberal city, but by the overpowering action of a public authority whose aim
was to fully and brutally replace the old city by a new one — a new city for a new and collectivist
society. After 1990, development became ultra-liberal and merely the sum of disparate individual
projects. Competition and individualism, coupled with the growing indifference to public space,
led to the emergence of enclosed and protected private places, which are firmly separated from
what became a non-public environment. In today’s ultra-liberal city, gradual transitions are most
often replaced by setting barriers and by an ever more obvious segregation.
This paper is about Bucharest, but I expect that its quite particular situation also becomes a
“showcase” for a discussion on limits and urbanity, on the one hand, and on the cohabitation of
centrality and marginality, seemingly irreconcilable, on the other.
In this respect, certain clarifications are probably needed. In its most common sense, “margin” refers
to an end, a frontier, a periphery, or to the idea of a final stage which is either unreachable or leads
to disaster if trespassed. Yet, as this paper deals with the urban, I regard the margin as a physical
and social interface that defines territories, ruptures, transitions, degrees of difference and cohesion,
intimacy and exposure, in the end, the character of a city. Even if the paper discusses the historical
and contemporary development of Bucharest from the point of view of limits, this is not a
historical study; its closest domain is that of urban and architectural morphology, from a diachronic
perspective. However, as morphology is too often emphasizing the form per se, celebrating its
62 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

autonomy, for my part, I am trying to place the research at an articulation point between physical
urban form and social practice. The approach is somehow syncretic, based on personal observation
and analyses, students’ works, as well as from existing research in several domains.
It is inevitably an incomplete view, and one that invites additional, more complex as well as
multidisciplinary research. For now, the paper focuses on the character of a city while using a
particular definition of limits as a way to describe the evolution of a culture of dwelling. I hope
that my approach on Bucharest will prove relevant for a wider discussion tackling global issues
such as the loss of mediation, of filters, the closing and the disjunction between urban territories.

Bucharest: Weak Limits and Juxtaposition of Unfinished Cities

One cannot imagine the European historic city without its fortifications. Greek and Roman cities,
as well as the ones that followed, were physically and symbolically marked by centers of sacred
and/or civil (sometimes civic) and commercial power, but also and always by the strong limit
of their walls. In what concerns the medieval city, precincts were so important that Max Weber
holds them to be one of the mandatory criteria for a Middle-Age town, alongside the political and
legal autonomy.1 Fortifications were first and foremost used for defensive purposes, but they also
functioned as a strong and clear symbolic demarcation of the urban territory.
In most European cities, defensive walls define a model of development transcending historical
periods. It accommodates the increasing density of population within the walls, the clustering
of constructions outside the walls, the need for expansion and inclusion of the periphery
within new walls, etc. In some of the later cases, post-medieval development proved to be
discontinuous, with marginal quarters being separated from the older town by an empty
territory for defensive reasons. This reading is, certainly, very schematic and oversimplifying.
There were some important exceptions such as Rome, which for a long time did not fully
occupy its older territory (but we are still talking about densification there), or other cities
that either lacked fortifications or were polycentric, such as London. However, from Northern
Europe all the way down to Transylvania, concentration and progressive expansion within
successive walls are hallmarks of urban development up until the 19th century. Compactness
ensured the survival of an essential urban structure even after the demolition of the walls; even
if few of the original medieval constructions survived, their replacements carried on most of the
street network and plot structure, the continuous street fronts, etc., allowing the reading of its
historical development.
Bucharest, a rather young settlement in the European context, has never followed this pattern.
Its main urban cultural reference is the Balkans, or the European South-East. In keeping with
the terms and categories put forth by Maurice Cerasi, we are dealing with an Ottoman city, a
type which is itself a particular instance of the Oriental type.2 A marginal Ottoman city, though,
which happened to be closer to Central-European influences and where a concrete Islamic
presence was insignificant if not downright non-existent, because of the limited administrative
and cultural autonomy that the principality of Wallachia enjoyed. Mosques and a relevant
Turkish population were missing, and a significant continuity of population, law, etc. from
before the instauration of the Ottoman rule has been documented.3 However, the essential
features of the Ottoman city as defined by Maurice Cerasi were there: no urban administrative or
1 Max Weber, Die Stadt. Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. Abt. I Schriften und Reden: Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft. Band 22/5: Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte. Nachlass.
Teilband 5 [The City. Complete Works of Max Weber. Section 1. Writings and Speeches: Economy and
Society . Volume 22/5: The Economy and the Social Orders and Powers. Estate. Partial Volume 5]
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck Verlag, 1999).
2 Maurice Cerasi, La Città del Levante. Civiltà urbana e architettura sotto gli Ottomani nei secoli XVIII-XIX
[The Levantine City. Urban Civilisation and Architecture under the Ottoman Rule in the 18th and 19th
Century] (Milano: Jaca Books, 1986). Bucharest is naturally included by Cerasi in this category.
3 See, for instance, Constantin C. Giurescu, Istoria Bucureștilor [The History of Bucharest] (Bucharest:
Editura Sport-Turism, 1979).
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 63

judicial autonomy, few and weak civic institutions, buildings and spaces, a highly multicultural
character, but with communities settling in separate areas, with neighborhoods centered mainly
around a large number of places of worship. Bucharest was highly polycentric and housed,
apart from Romanians, practically the same ethnic communities present all over the region
(Jewish, Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, etc.) to various degrees. There were weak mechanisms of
planning, indistinct definition of property, irregular plot and street structure, frail construction
materials (with the exception of the few important buildings, mostly churches and monasteries).4
Moreover, there were no city walls to act as territorial limits. We learn from historical documents
that 15th century Bucharest was encircled by fortifications made of wood and earth; thus, their
defensive capacity was weak, as was their capability to control the city extension. But even this
rather symbolic limit vanished at the beginning of the 17th century, as the Ottoman authority
forbade any city fortification, allowing only the protection of monasteries with defensive walls.5
Consequently, the only material demarcation of the urban territory and the only means to
effectively control the urban expansion disappeared.6 No other administrative border would prove
to be effective thereafter and the city spread freely.7
The consequences for the city’s development were decisive. The topographic plan drawn by
Rudolf Borroczyn in 1846 — the first rigorous topographic plan, and the main record of the
city before modernization — shows a disconcerting urban territory: there is a more compact
center that concentrates the main political, administrative and commercial functions; from this
nucleus, a series of more densely built main streets spread out radially, some of them turning
into roads leading to other cities and then neighboring countries. The loose urban fabric spread
between them can be easily associated with the rural world (and it was usually considered as such
by foreign travelers), featuring gardens, fields, dispersed and random constructions, moderately
more concentrated around churches and monasteries. The existence of denser areas and the well-
documented presence of a rich mix of urban functions belies the usual cliché of old Bucharest as a
conglomerate of villages, a quite frequent interpretation.8 In my opinion, we should rather speak
of a mixture of town and village. While in the Western world, traditional towns were compact
and clearly separated from the rural territory, here the two realms are woven together into a
continuum that, on the one hand, extends an urban structure far away from the central nucleus
and, on the other hand, helps a rural character survive right next to and even within this very
center. This heterogeneousness would prove crucial for the modern development that ensued.
Like all major cities of the Balkans, Bucharest would soon change in order to modernize and
to become truly representative for a capital city of the newly born nation-state. To this aim, it
adopted Western urban development models. If in most other cases of urban modernization
this meant that the city would have to be expanded away from the old center, Bucharest, which
was already spread-out, rather required densification of the existing fabric. I would argue that
this logic of development lies behind the puzzling urban image of Bucharest — with outrageous
and ever-present variations in scale, age and styles — all along the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The highly unusual co-presence of various models (and ages) generated another strong cliché
concerning Bucharest, namely, that of a completely uncontrolled modern development. This
cliché could be partially true: contradictions, corruption, lack of strategy and pragmatism
4 These features (that could be found in most Ottoman cities, including Istanbul) would lead to massive
removal of the traditional urban fabric in cities across the Balkans during the emergence of national states
and the modernization of the 19th and 20th centuries.
5 From military point of view, a walled city in this geographical area was not strategically important, while in
the event of local uprisings, fortifications would only have hindered the Ottomans’ regaining control.
6 In Thessaloniki, Belgrade and Sarajevo, for example, due to the existence of city walls, the area of the
pre-modern urban expansion is relatively small.
7 For the disappearance of walls and its consequences, see mainly Giurescu, Istoria Bucureștilor or Teodor
Octavian Gheorghiu, “Particularitățile apărării orașelor medievale românești extracarpatice. Elemente de
dinamică a morfologiei urbane” [“Particularities of Defense in Medieval Cities from the Region Outside the
Carpathians. Elements of Urban Morphology Dynamics”], Historia Urbana IV, 1-2 (1996): 97-111.
8 Ana Maria Zahariade, “Bucureștiul, un mare sat / Bucharest as a Large Village”, in Simptome de tranziție /
Symptoms of transition, vol. II (Bucharest: Arhitext, 2009): 39-62.
64 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

Fig. 01: Bucharest, central area: porosity and a superposition of projects.

are, nevertheless, societal facts characteristic for the entire country (and even for a larger East
European territory). Yet, the fabric of Bucharest is not merely a more or less picturesque chaos, it
is rather the consequence of the successive and inevitable superposition of plans for modernizing
the city — a local paradigm, underlain by an ambitious vision for the city, envisioned as a new
“Western capital”, triumphantly emerging from the traditional, Oriental backdrop. This dream
was clearly expressed from the beginning, in the Organic Regulations, created and enforced
in the first half of the 19th century as the first modern set of laws and rules.9 The longing for a
national state expressed by “national” modern cities was then a common aspiration for all Balkan
countries, but implemented in different ways.10 In Bucharest, the process took the form of an
incessant urban transformation — a kind of “continuous discontinuity” — leaving particular
traces which are worth understanding.11
Among the possible models to be followed in the modernization of the city, the interpretation
of the Haussmann-ian operations in Paris was chosen. This was only natural, as French
influence was decisive for the beginnings of Romanian modernization,12 including quite
9 Regulamentul Organic, a semi-constitutional code of law, was adopted in Wallachia in 1831, during
the Russian administration of the Danube Principalities. Its annex, The Regulation for Sanitation,
Embellishment and Police of the city of Bucharest, was the first articulated urban regulation of the city.
10 See the seminal book by Alexandra Yerolympos, Urban Transformations in the Balkans (1820 – 1920).
Aspects of Balkan Town Planning and the Remaking of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki: Thessaloniki University
Studio Press, 1996).
11 For Bucharest as a Balkanic city and the subsequent modernization, including the devastating project
of the 1980s, see Dana Harhoiu, București, un oraș între Orient și Occident / Bucharest, a City Between
Orient and Occident (Bucharest: Simetria, 2005). While some observations are pioneering and the
graphics extremely powerful and relevant, one should take with extreme caution the claiming and proofs for
a “hidden geometrical order” for old Bucharest. For the modern planning philosophy see especially Nicolae
Lascu, Bulevardele bucureștene până la Primul Război Mondial [The Boulevards of Bucharest up to World
War I] (Bucharest: Simetria, 2011), as well as the doctoral thesis of the same author - Nicolae Lascu,
Legislație și dezvoltare urbană. București 1831 – 1952 [Urban Regulations and Development, Bucharest
1831 – 1952] (PhD thesis, Bucharest: “Ion Mincu” Institute of Architecture, 1997). The latter studies the
urban regulations, their reasons, models and application throughout the liberal modernization period. It
is, to my knowledge, the first and most coherent work contracting the “chaotic development of Bucharest”
cliché and one of the essential references for this paper.
12 See Pompiliu Eliade, De l’influence française sur l’esprit public en Roumanie (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1898).
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 65

naturally for architecture and urban planning. This model was probably deemed more suitable
for a city that was supposed to reorganize a large territory, rather than to expand; while
grids worked better for new towns or extensions, the Parisian model was foremost about
restructuring, consolidating and densifying. Its interpretation transposed into urban decisions
and regulations and reflected in “la grande croisée” of the North-South and East-West axes,
several other new boulevards, crossings, tridents, round or oval squares, etc. While subsequent
city development would also borrow other prevalent European practices, the Parisian model
turned out to be the more enduring.
Paris achieved its essential transformation quite quickly, even if the last boulevards were only
finished in the interwar period. Yet, Bucharest never benefited from strong authorities, financial
and technological means, and the entire social context that facilitated the rapid development
of Paris. Furthermore, Romanian authorities could not freely dispose of the land, as several
other Balkan cities did in the process of modernization. In cities like Sofia and Belgrade, the
departure of the Turkish population after the respective states gained their independence from the
Ottoman Empire led to a nationalization of the properties formerly owned by this population,
which allowed local authorities to use them as freely available land, to wipe out the Ottoman
urban fabric and to replace it with a new and geometrically ordered structure.13 This was not the
case in Bucharest, since the city had never had a significant Turkish population. Throughout its
development, Bucharest had to keep expropriations to a minimum, and the administration was
permanently involved in intense negotiations with private owners. Moreover, the backdrop of the
urban modernization was an existing oriental-type street, plot and building structure.
Taking all this into account, the process was inevitably slow, fragmentary and inconsistent. The
authorities had two main instruments at their disposal. Firstly, they resorted to smaller scale
interventions: successive fulfillment of segments of boulevards (thus, the completion of the
North-South and East-West axes took over eighty years), regularization of the existing street
network, insertion of public buildings as focal points and building of small ordered ensembles.
Secondly, they made use of planning and building regulations, all details of which (the regulated
building-to-plot area ratio, the alignment of buildings relative to the street, the height of the
cornice, etc.) were aimed at creating a modern, homogeneous, well-ordered and “European” city.14
However, the long duration required for implementation inevitably led to delays, paralleled by
steady updates or replacements of regulations, required by both the new dynamic of the society
and the evolution of urban thinking. (Fig. 01)
On the other hand, there was also a programmatic desire to part with certain features of the
inherited city. In other cases, such as Berlin or Vienna, when rules and regulations were applied
to operations on quasi-free lands, it was easier to connect the new quarters to the old city; the
extensions developed an already compact structure, with continuous building fronts and a
coherent and civically assumed public space. (Fig. 02) In the case of Bucharest (and of other
cities in the region, as well), the local architectural heritage was disparaged, and a fragile old city,
perceived as chaotic, not really urban and too “Oriental”, was probably also too alien to suit
the newly embraced nationalism.15 As a result, not only was it objectively difficult to integrate
the extant city in a new vision, but this vision seemed to actually aim at its removal. And this
had to happen against a rather liberal context, therefore not through a series of authoritarian
interventions, but rather through limited operations (as mentioned above) and regulations of the
private endeavor.
Consequently, none of the important stages of transformation — such as the decisive
interventions of end of the 19th century, or the glorious thirties, when modernism filled the city
on an impressive scale — was completed. There was simply too much to be done at too fast a
13 See Yerolympos, Urban Transformations in the Balkans, 5.
14 See Harhoiu, Bucharest, and especially Nicolae Lascu, Bulevardele bucureștene, 6.
15 It is quite significant that neutral terms, such as “mahala” and “maidan”, imported from Turkish language
into Romanian, quickly changed their meaning in the 19th century, from neighborhood and open public
space into the clearly pejorative ones of slum, bad peripheral neighborhood and terrain vague, respectively.
66 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

rate. Ironically, but not unexpectedly, each stage of transformation would in turn be perceived as
chaotic, “un-modern”, therefore as an unsatisfactory context for the next project. As none of the
visions were able to fill their task to the very end, each only managed to add a new urban layer,
over the previous ones. For instance, although there are very few buildings left from the pre-
modern city, some of its traces can still be identified in the oriental street pattern of many areas
which were only re-modelled instead of being replaced with a new system; or behind the modern
boulevards, marked by density, height, and an intensity of functions and traffic, in the bucolic
atmosphere of the adjacent streets with small houses and yards with vine.
Even before the great totalitarian project (that will be dealt with later on), Bucharest’s central
area was the result of the juxtaposition of unfinished urban projects. The initial weakness of the
boundary between the city and the rest of the territory led to the omnipresent co-dependent
cohabitation of historical strata. When an average central street in Bucharest displays a small
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 67

Fig. 02: The Borroczyn plan, 1852 (opposite page), and, at approximatively the same scale, an almost complete plan of
Barcelona in 1863 including Cerda’s design for the Eixample (above). Barcelona is the star example of connecting a
historical compact center with former rural settlements (like Gràcia, in the upper part of the plan) through a new form: a logic
of controlled extensive growth. In a stark contrast, Bucharest before its modernization was already a large city, mixing urban
and rural territories.

Byzantine church, some low and long semi-detached houses clad with the peculiar and eclectic
neoclassical style of the end of the 19th century, national-style villas and small apartment buildings
of the twenties, large modernist buildings of the thirties happily standing side by side — this
is not the result of a careless anarchy, but of the successive juxtaposition of different inclusion
principles, out of which neither was fully implemented; not just disorder, but a layering of
different orders. This superposition of unfinished projects has shaped Bucharest: it did not
only determine the eclecticism that leaves both visitors and inhabitants perplexed, but also the
coexistence of a polymorphous and diffuse center and several pockets of marginality. (Fig. 03)
 CONSTRUCTIONS BLOCK AND PLOT STRUCTURE
STREET PATTERN
1852
1911
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1989
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 69

Fig. 03: A fragment of the center. From left to right, constructions, block and street pattern, plot structure. From top to bottom,
the evolution - 1852, 1911, 1989.
1852: Roughly left and center lies the main historical core, already dense in the pre-modern city. One can notice the irregular
street pattern, the urban strongpoints (monasteries, churces, inns) and how a main street (Podul Târgului de Afară, now
Calea Moșilor) rises from this center towards the North-East. A clearly rural structure can be seen in the bottom right corner
of the plan.
1911: Before World War I, densification is well underway. While the medieval street pattern remains, most of the buildings
(except some of the churches) have already been replaced. Notice how streets and other public spaces become larger and
regular-shaped – Western models and ordering are superposed on the Ottoman structure.
1989: Further densification, and immediately visible, the last part of the North-South axis, cut in the late 1930s and 40s. On
the right part, the previous rural-like area is now a dense, yet quite porous structure, very different from the closed blocks
of the historical commercial core. Most constructions are “train carriage houses”. In terms of figure-ground relation, neither
constructions nor voids are preeminent here – an ambiguous pattern with soft limits.

Limit as Place. On the Transparency of the Urban Fabric

Besides the omnipresent dissimilarities in style, height and manners of occupying the plot, one
of the most conspicuous features of the city is the fluidity of its constructed limits. Stereotypes
such as “the city of gardens”, “the green city”, “the village-city” suggest not only the richness and
multitude of green spaces or just the low density, but also a particular relationship between the
private and the public space, between the exterior and the interior. In an earlier work,16 I dealt
with this type of relations in terms of “transparency”, by giving an urban interpretation to the
concept of “virtual transparency” which was invented by György Kepes, then elaborated on by
Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky for the case of modernist architecture, and further developed by
Bernhard Hoesli. Conceived as the opposite of “literal transparency”, which refers to glass walls
and other such elements, virtual transparency, as these authors understood it, refers to those
objects and spaces that belong to more than one organizing system.17 For Rowe and Slutzky, the
Bauhaus building was literally transparent, while any of Le Corbusier’s villas, with their intricate
and superposed systems (structure, envelope, partitions, etc.) and rich spatial structure, display
phenomenal transparency. In a more urban and generic context, a typical Dutch house, with its
large glazed panels, yet strict separation between exterior and interior is literally transparent; on
the contrary, in the case of certain buildings with few openings, phenomenal transparency can
be created by a porch perceived as belonging at the same time to the edifice and to the city, by
a gallery or a veranda which are simultaneously exterior spaces and parts of the construction; a
close is a bit more private than a street, etc. Phenomenal transparency is about complexity and
controlled reciprocal contamination between realms and is present to some degree in any urban
and architectural context.
Bucharest represents a particular case of urban transparency, whose particularity resides not in the
isolated elements that shape it (all of which can be found in a wide range of urban cultures), but
rather in the intricate adjustment of privacy and exposure, of the individual and the community
— a way to produce and experience space. This overlapping of filters, which is so different
from the neat, solid separations of the Western city, lasted and developed in the transformation
process from the traditional to the modern liberal city, and can be seen as a combination of three
attributes at three different levels of the urban fabric.
The first is that of the discontinuous intensity of the public character of urban space, which
adds a certain privacy to some areas: dilated segments of streets, excrescences, pockets or
alveolar spaces, etc. Such differences in intensity are to be found even along the main extant
axes of the city, such as Calea Victoriei, the first and only authoritarian intervention before
modernization. (Fig. 04) Other such places are the innumerable dead-ends, closes, cul-de-sacs
in the city. Being a characteristic element of the urban fabric and of Balkan urban culture,
16 Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Orașul transparent. Limite și locuire în București / Transparent city. On limits and
dwelling in Bucharest (Bucharest. Zeppelin and Ion Mincu Publishing House, 2009).
17 I used the following edition: C. Rowe, R. Slutzky, Transparence réelle et virtuelle (nouvelle édition avec
des commentaires de B. Hoesli) (Paris: Les Editions du Demi-Cercle, Paris, 1992). Originally published
as “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal”, in Perspecta 8, The Yale Architectural Journal (New Haven,
Connecticut, 1963).
70 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

Fig. 04: (above) Calea Victoriei, one of the main and oldest streets of the historical city. Analysis of different levels of
transparency. The lightest hatch shows differentiations within the public space. The photograph also shows the juxtaposition
of styles and heights, an expression of continuous changes on a prestigious boulevard.
Fig. 05: (opposite page) 1930s apartment building on Popa Nan Street, Bucharest - or how to Balkanize modernism. This is
clearly not a vernacular or traditional structure, yet it densifies by enhancing the „train carriage house” model. Notice the long
and narrow side yard, and also the house on the right. The regulation followed by the block of flats assumed that all the older
houses on the street would gradually be replaced. This did not happen, nor did it on almost any street in the central area.

these places are quite present in the traditional city, and they underwent a specific reuse in the
process of modernization, as extremely popular and varied local interpretations of Western
models.18
The second attribute concerns the relationship between street, plot and house, which allows for a
visual communication between the public space and the depth of the building plot. This is due to
the use of a specific type of dwelling — the so-called “train carriage house”. This type consists of
a string of rooms leading one into the next, growing perpendicularly to the street and towards the
depth of the plot, with the house placed adjacent to one of the lateral limits of the plot. Thus, the
courtyard of these dwellings runs parallel to the building itself. As a consequence, the transition
toward the intimate interior is done by passing through a sequence of exterior spaces with various
degrees of openness to the public space. The comb-like alternation of buildings and courtyards
opens the back of the plot and of the urban block to the public eye and makes for a profound
border between the public and the private.
This dwelling type is probably reminiscent of some rural plot occupation and marks the passage
– through densification and adaptation – from the isolated building, indifferent to the limits of
the plot, to a more regulated urban front. Yet the persistence and development of this typology,
even in conditions of enthusiastic importation of Western architectural models, like posh villas
and high-rise housing, indicates the strong commitment to a mediated transition from the
dwelling to the city. Even modernism adapted to this type of fabric, in a fortunate meeting of
high European and local models. When density grows beyond a certain point, as well as when
continuous fronts are imposed by regulations (i.e. in the main boulevards), transparency is
achieved through fractures, regressions and gardens with openings that dilute the stability of
the building fronts. (Fig. 05)
18 See also Ana Maria Zahariade (ed.), De la înfundătură la intrare: Locuri ale Bucureștiului cotidian [From
Dead-end to Close: Places of Everyday Bucharest] (Bucharest: Ed. Universitară “Ion Mincu”, 2016).
Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 71
72 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

The third attribute consists of transitional spaces from the interior of the buildings to the exterior.
Once again, there is nothing new or exclusively specific to Bucharest here, but rather an ever-
present range of partial advancements and retreats, balconies, verandas, bay windows, and even
strongly articulated decorative elements which end up creating a richness of spatial strata on the
façade — a skin as deep as possible.
After analyzing a series of concrete cases from this perspective, one may consider this kind of
transparency a structural morphological trait of modern Bucharest, a feature which managed to
transcend historical periods and has adapted to a variety of functions, styles and urban situations.
They are to be found both in more formal architecture and in the urban vernacular and, in my
opinion, define a building culture. It seems hazardous to causally link spatial traits to social aspects
in the absence of deeper multidisciplinary research on the correlation between physical limits and
social practices. Yet I believe it is acceptable to see transparency as a way of mediating between
the public and the private. What we are faced with is not a rejection of public space, or a form
of isolation from the city — such a phenomenon would have led to stronger barriers, not to
filters. I rather see here a tendency to mediate the opening up of intimate private space through
as many layers as possible; a tendency to moderate the transition from the great scale of the city
to their home (to my knowledge, a tendency never expressed in a formal discourse); finally, a way
of taming one’s relation with the urban space in a century of unsettling changes. I think that we
can distinguish in pre-World War II Bucharest a general public space structure, and, grafted on
it, a system of varied semi-public and semi-private spaces. The relation of this particular physical
mediation between the public and private realms and the manner in which inhabitants relate to the
city may be inferred better if we examine the evolution of these urban limits during the totalitarian
post-war period, and then in the ultra-liberal system that followed the 1989 Revolution.

Collision and Barriers. The Socialist City and The Post-1989 City

The brutal instauration of the socialist regime brought about a major shift in the urban
development. Negotiations between public and private interests, which previously had led to
moderate projects and regulations, were replaced by the new status of the public authority as
unique initiator, planner, legislator, administrator and producer of the city, which imposed
a set framework onto the inhabitants. It must be stressed that, irrespective of the urban and
architectural models employed for new constructions during socialism — be they enclosed or
open precincts, apartment buildings raised in already extant urban fabrics, functionalist urbanism
with isolated building spread in an empty space, or the never-ending range of apartment
buildings typical of the seventies and eighties —, the public-private mediation was replaced by
an absolute public space surrounding the buildings. This new public space became ground for
authority and surveillance, while private space remained the only place of individual freedom
and the shelter of a freer sociability, itself limited and discreet. Retreating to one’s home became
a strategy against the state’s claim for total control. The complex intermingling of private and
public space that had been the norm before Socialism was now replaced with a strict separation
between the urban, collective space and the personal one.19 However, to some extent, a certain
appropriation of the space outside one’s home could occur. For instance, in the case of collective
dwellings, small gestures of appropriation appear in the corridors, stairwells (spaces indeed
more familiar, but nonetheless under surveillance) and also in the space around the apartment
building (totally collective) where small gardens, sheds, fences, etc. were tolerated, sometimes
encouraged, sometimes forbidden. In the extant pre-war urban fabric, changes were limited:
minimal interventions by the inhabitants (be they owners or living in nationalized houses), repairs
by the authorities, etc. New buildings and ensembles in the central area were few and mostly
quite well integrated into an existing context, while most construction works were concentrated
19 We are still waiting for a monography on architecture and urbanism in the Romanian socialist city. Up until
now there are rather works on separate subjects (like dwellings, for instance), or collections of revised
articles. See, for instance, Ana Maria Zahariade, Arhitectura în proiectul comunist. România 1944-1989 /
Architecture in the Communist Project. Romania 1944-1989 (Bucharest: Simetria, 2011).
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 73

at the periphery, extending the city far beyond its pre-war boundaries with huge neighborhoods
comprising hundreds of thousands of dwellings. This was to radically change in the 1970s, when
dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu started his project of remodeling the city.
The “great plan”, primarily expressed by the delirious House of the People and its subsequent
boulevard, also consisted of a series of radical demolitions throughout the central area, that can
be regarded as another stage of the already long tradition of attempts to replace an old city with a
new one. The dictator’s megalomania and iron rule were the main reason behind this disaster. But,
we may ask ourselves, is it that radical project encountered such little opposition also because the
urban heritage was not really appreciated by most people including many architects? This might
have occurred precisely because the old undervaluation of Bucharest as eclectic and disordered,
continued under the new regime.
Yet, despite superficial similarities, the differences between the pre-war and the totalitarian city are
still tremendous. It is not only the size and brutality of this operation that is to blame, but the very
fact that it had no real practical use (thus justifying its brutality to some extent), merely following a
self-centered logic, and producing discontinuity. This time, there was no room left for negotiation,
articulation, development control, or reusing and upgrading the pre-existing urban fabric. Ceaușescu
wished to wipe out any sign of the past, not just churches and houses, but the whole fabric of streets
and plots, and to build a perfectly new city as a site and expression of absolute power.20
In the end, not even this most radical, bold and daring project of all was able to fully achieve
its goals: it added the newest and largest unfinished layer to the city, which resulted in a deep
disarticulation of the urban system. Thus, the now famous five kilometer long axis became a
barrier severing the southern and northern parts of the city. Over a fifth of a central area that
escaped both the destructions during the war and the demolishing appetite of functionalism was
now gone. At the same time, the construction of new boulevards implied extensive demolitions
and the building of never ending rows of blocks of flats. These walls of concrete and the vacant
lots behind them separate and conceal important fragments of historical fabric. Thus, an entire
history of porosity, layering and complex connections has been contradicted. More than ever in
its history, Bucharest became a disarticulate city marked by barriers, voids, and fragments.
Even after the collapse of the totalitarian regime in 1989, the city underwent enormous
transformations, yet the logic behind these changes was now the exact opposite: the authoritarian
control and the idea of the common good (discredited by its demagogic use during Communism)
were now replaced with a highly individualistic development. With the exception of some
technical projects and official buildings, the city administration relinquished its role in the making
of the city. Ineffective new regulations together with the incapability to enforce them allowed
a wild real estate market to do whatever it pleased. The disregard of regulations — otherwise
characteristic to all former communist countries — led to chaotic changes. The destruction of
local heritage has yet to be stopped, the difference being that now it is not caused by totalitarian
will, but by ultra-liberalism, real estate sharks and individual dreams of representativeness. Thirty
years after the fall of communism, there is still no cooperation and no coordination.
This is also visible in the definition of limits and territories. The city is produced by the chaotic
juxtaposition of multiple individual projects. Paradoxically, the end of dictatorship did not lead
to a reconstruction of the public space, as many might have expected. In fact, the withdrawal
towards the interior did continue and even increased in comparison to the years before 1989, in
accordance to a logic of individualism and competition. Public space, an expression of power and
control during socialism, has now become a no man’s land, a non-space that we still have to use,
but from which people try to evade and protect themselves in isolated private spaces.
20 The 19th century and interwar boulevards also cut through an existing fabric, but following a coherent
vision (and, at that time, it was not even considered that brutal). They did not erase it. Construction
was achieved by individual investors on individual plots, obeying (sometimes getting a bit around)
regulations. However large the differences in size, height, etc. the new buildings articulate themselves to
the existing plot structure and their neighbors. In the Ceaușescu project, the superficially similar image
(high alignments with a lower fabric behind them) actually follows a totally different logic: the imposed and
homogenous operation does not ever articulate itself to the existing, as it was meant to replace it.
74 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

This transformation is manifest at all scales and in all urban situations: from large scale
operations, such as the brutal implementation of residential buildings in unsuitable places and in
unsuitable manners, to micro-interventions, such as the totally deregulated closing of balconies;
it is visible in the building of new fences and the turning of old fences into fortress-like walls,
but also in the obsessive occupation of public space through illegal parking, in the building of
kiosks on the sidewalks or the chaotic street publicity. As common ground fades away, urban life
moves to enclosed and protected spaces, such as the mall, which is now the consensual ersatz for
public space. (Fig. 06, 07)
Urban territory is becoming a sum of private places, as safe and closed-up as possible. We are
witnessing a process of voluntary separation, in which limits become barriers.

Moving Further. On Articulation and the Re-invention of Transparency

When discussing the scale of the city, its present state and the radical transformations it is
subjected to, one must necessarily take into account the tradition of disparaging the past that
survived not just in the socialist era, but also in the new liberal order. There is even a strong
discourse stating that traditional fragmentariness and eclecticism may justify any intervention,
no matter how brutal: those would actually be quite in line with how Bucharest has always been
built. (Fig. 08) If collage was the basic rule, why not take it further? A counterargument to this
position is that the allegedly anarchic local development of modernity is, as shown above, a
misinterpretation. There were indeed a real urban project and a modernizing ideal in the first
modern age of Bucharest; they had social and cultural support and were synchronized to a global
context, which is clearly not the case today. In addition to this, the most treasured parts of the city
are either those that successfully manage to allow the coherent coexistence of more strata, or those
that were successful in continuing some initial projects (the above mentioned “Haussmann-ian”
axes are a good example in this respect).
On the other hand, it goes without saying that no one can fully adhere now to the pre-war urban
planning philosophy, as not just the situation and needs, but our relationship with the past has
fundamentally changed. Today one cannot simply do away with a small 19th century house simply
because it does not match the new neighboring six-storey block of flats. One has to fathom other
ways of managing the city, ways that privilege synchronicity, but also continuity and sometimes
unnoticed potentials. For instance, the disparities and the mix-up between hyperactive areas and
voids in the urban fabric or the central areas that still preserve an almost rural character may also
be considered an asset. They define an urban reserve that would allow for a smart and sensitive
densification and a balanced development, thus offering an alternative to harmful suburban spread.
Clearly, there is no magic method to be used, but rather a series of different approaches steered by
a set of guiding principles, deriving from the understanding of the city’s specificity. One of these
principles is that any new stratum should not just overlap already extant historical fragments.
Instead, it should preserve them as much as possible and intelligently tie them to the new: a weaving
together of the fragments into an old new coat, connecting and reconnecting them; a reconciliation
of the collisions that shape the city, but also a pragmatic and responsible injection of modernity.
So far, we have experienced the logic of substitution of an urban ideal with the next, first in
a liberal system, then in a non-liberal one, only to find ourselves today in an era of disjoined
juxtaposition. We may hope for a new paradigm based on adaptation and articulation of
fragments and layers.
From a fatalistic perspective, we may regard the new logic of barriers as an unescapable
reality, a definitive change undergone by the local dwelling culture. This would not even be
completely original, but rather an extreme case of a global contemporary propensity towards
privatization, isolation and loss of the old-style physical “common ground”. A more optimistic
perspective would be that we are only dealing with a stage in the slow and painful transition
from totalitarianism towards a moderate liberalism with its complement, the rebirth of a normal
relation to the city.
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 75

Fig. 06: Magheru Boulevard, the proud metropolitan axis of Bucharest. This 2009 photo shows some of its contradictions: it is a
Haussmannian-type boulevard, but was only cut in the 1930s; all buildings were supposed to be in a modernist style, but then,
like on the left, exceptions somehow sneaked through; finally, the closed balconies and the huge advertising mesh (covering
lived-in apartments, and not a building site) express the individualism, fragmentation and anti-urban attitude after 1989.
Fig. 07: Totalitarian city and ultra-liberal city: right, socialist blocks of flats replacing razed historical fabric; left, the mall as the
favorite replacement of public space.
76 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

Fig. 08: Central area, historical fabric with several layers, new interventions.
Fig. 09: ADN BA: apartment complex, Dogarilor Street. Taking urban culture into the 21st century.
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 77

Fig. 10, 11: Tranzit.ro/Bucharest. Injecting centrality and a culture of the commons in a marginal area.

In support of this latter scenario, we can acknowledge that more and more intelligent
alternative solutions to the above described situation have emerged in recent times. The local
authorities are still being extremely hesitant, yet the city seems to be in a struggle to recreate
spaces for the community.21
One really has to look at individual operations for ways of reinventing transparency. Such is the
much-awarded apartment building on Dogarilor Street, designed by ADN BA. It is an acutely
contemporary and bold project, and at the same time a wonderful piece of Bucharest fabric.
Overhangs, retreats, crevasses, balconies, bow-windows, deep façade elements as well as the semi-
private spaces (the common room, common terraces, the interior courtyard) create a rich system
of filters and allow for a sensitive densification of the neighborhood. (Fig. 09)
21 The effects of such endeavors of the local administration and experts in urbanism are often superficial,
questionable if not even contradictory. This was the case of the historical core, which was transformed into
a pedestrian space without envisaging any other use, rehabilitation strategy, etc. What ensues is a space
of pure consumption, a wild outdoor mall.
78 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

Fig. 12: Mincu House, Headquarters of The Chamber of Architects of Romania. A typical Bucharest “train carriage house” accessed
through a lateral courtyard. The domestic image does not show the (now) semi-public and cultural character of the place.

A different category of actions is about transparency of use. Keeping and enhancing visual
transparency remains important, but not as much as programmatically creating urbanity and
relieving barriers and segregation. In order to compensate for eroding public space, private places get
a more public character. It is about the public in the sense of sheltering and even fostering common
activities other than consumption in protected yet open spaces, evincing a fertile multiplicity.
As an example, tranzit.ro/Bucharest, part of a network of independent cultural spaces, is located
in the south, close to the quasi-impenetrable barrier of Ceaușescu’s axis, therefore in the
underprivileged, half concealed and isolated part of the city. Housed in former workshops at
the back of a building plot, tranzit.ro now functions as an art center, but also as a community
garden, a space for agricultural production and collaboration. In the garden, vegetables co-inhabit
the same space with the so-called weeds, bushes and trees, as well as (semi-)permanent or very
 Marginalia. Limits within the Urban Realm 79

provisional art installation and cultural and social events. Legally private, it opens-up for public
use and creates an urban hotbed in a marginal place. (Fig. 10, 11)
While architects were not involved in tranzit.ro, they are the generators of a private common-
good project known as “The Mincu House”, former residence of Ion Mincu, an important
Romanian architect of the 19th century. It was bought in several stages by the Chamber of
Architects of Romania and restored over a period of more than ten years. Given the lack of
support from local authorities, the project had to benefit from independent funding, while in the
restoration work tens of volunteers were involved. Besides the offices of the Chamber, the garden
and the ground floor were programmatically meant to serve the city as places for cultural events.
The former private dwelling functions as a porous and semi-private extension of the street and a
generator of urban life. (Fig. 12)
These independent initiatives are still exceptions to a saddening general state. Although they did
function as examples of good practice, no number of bottom-up and private action can act as
substitutes for coordination, strategies and a truly public endeavor. Nowadays, Bucharest is still
confused, fragmentary, segregated and disarticulate, and, of course, opaque. It remains to be seen
if the administration, the architects and the inhabitants will come to understand the particular
transparency that the city once exhibited, and will be interested in acting accordingly: to open up,
to connect and articulate, rather than to exclude and to block out.
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ILLUSTRATION CREDITS:

Fig. 01, 05-08: Photo by Ștefan Tuchilă.

Fig. 02: Personal digital archive (Borroczyn plan, 1852) / https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Cerd%C3%A1#/
media/File:PlaCerda1859b.jpg
Fig. 03: Mapping by 3th year students, Group 31 B, Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, aca-
demic year 2016-2017. Tutors: Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Cosmin Pavel, Mihnea Simiraș.
Fig. 04: Photo-collage by Ștefan Tuchilă.
Fig. 09, 10, 11: Photo by Cosmin Dragomir.
Fig. 12: Photo by Andrei Mărgulescu.