A. TOMECI
Bucharest is a plastic city. I use this word with a specific meaning in mind, and although semantic precision is so heavily prized in architectural discourse, it does not emerge as a priority in the architectural language through which this city so loudly exists.
It has not proven adaptability to its residents through conscious planning and design, so it is not that kind of plastic. Decades of questionable and sometimes schizotypal decisions, on all scales, have forced its inhabitants to reject it as a healthy moving object through time.
This massive object so explicitly shows structural and functional weaknesses, that its ways of being cannot be healthily assimilated. A ninth 1 of Romania’s population lives here, and their own individual realities clash with and go against that of the built environment’s - somewhere along the way, living here became a case of collective cognitive dissonance.
As with all stories, framing is important. And in the way I choose to see it, Bucharest-enii are individuals who need to provide relief for their cognitive dissonance. I will be looking at a highly visual (and controversial) way through which they achieve this - by exercising their creative will on the built environment. Disenfranchised and sometimes forgotten, people are outwardly forging their own vision of a habitat.
In Regim propriu, I draw upon the collective design process that is happening right now in various parts of the city. As we shall see, this process is fueled by architectural memes which unknowingly inhabit the minds of residents.
As anyone that has walked around the city, I noticed that it's becoming a mosaic of colours, textures and materials. Despite communist planning strategies that hoped for uniform ways of living, people are turning virtually identical apartment blocks into fertile grounds for self-expression. They are generating decorative or functional pieces of “informal” architecture, and I want to see if it is useful to pick this moment in time as representative for the unconscious needs of a population in defiance of its host.
The bits and pieces seen in the photos below do not cater to an overall coherence in the name of the built environment, as there is no top-down incentive to do so from the city itself. People will alter their share of the outside walls according to almost arbitrary needs, and will use any and every artefact that fits their particular vision, consciously or not.
The bits and pieces seen in the photos below do not cater to an overall coherence in the name of the built environment, as there is no top-down incentive to do so from the city itself. People will alter their share of the outside walls according to almost arbitrary needs, and will use any and every artefact that fits their particular vision, consciously or not.
Bucharest as seen by perceptive photographers. Sources, in order:Maybe start with changing the window frames, then you add a drying rack under your window sill; add a few planters, sprinkle some satellite dishes on top, and these iterations might go unnoticed until entire cantilevered balconies start showing up on load bearing walls. Most of these heavier objects are infamous for either the dangers they pose or for their unglamorous looks, yet more and more are sprouting everywhere, particularly in social housing estates and working class neighbourhoods.
This phenomenon is fueled by a shift in the attitude of residents who do not see themselves as part of a "collective" anymore. The cheap sell-off of state-owned apartments following the 1989 Revolution made it so that apartments are now perceived as aggressively private, with people only taking care of their own little "boxes", shutting themselves off from the city. 6
I believe we've reached a point where we are forced to look at these bits and pieces as a whole, as their visually compelling presence signals that they are an outright entity, separate from what the city "wants" to be.
I've tried to illustrate this entity's will to modulate through a series of four images. I've set as the starting point a simple building typology found in and around Aleea Livezilor, one of the most neglected residential areas in Bucharest. These apartment buildings have been denied better treatment by the city’s administration, and if you look at how some of these people live, it is a moment of crisis: unsafe drug use 7, lack of waste management 8, many barriers that children face in accessing education 9, etc.
If you wish to help, here are some resources: 10 , 11 , 12
The appearance of modular, cheap prefabricated concrete slabs were once a way of establishing a form of industrial egalitarianism. Now, they are blank canvases.
This phenomenon is fueled by a shift in the attitude of residents who do not see themselves as part of a "collective" anymore. The cheap sell-off of state-owned apartments following the 1989 Revolution made it so that apartments are now perceived as aggressively private, with people only taking care of their own little "boxes", shutting themselves off from the city. 6
I believe we've reached a point where we are forced to look at these bits and pieces as a whole, as their visually compelling presence signals that they are an outright entity, separate from what the city "wants" to be.
I've tried to illustrate this entity's will to modulate through a series of four images. I've set as the starting point a simple building typology found in and around Aleea Livezilor, one of the most neglected residential areas in Bucharest. These apartment buildings have been denied better treatment by the city’s administration, and if you look at how some of these people live, it is a moment of crisis: unsafe drug use 7, lack of waste management 8, many barriers that children face in accessing education 9, etc.
If you wish to help, here are some resources: 10 , 11 , 12
The appearance of modular, cheap prefabricated concrete slabs were once a way of establishing a form of industrial egalitarianism. Now, they are blank canvases.
1. Grid / Initial state
These changes happen from within. I start with an existing grid, and wait, as the phenomenon unfolds.
There is an underlying creative drive through which residents are establishing a narrow but infectious part of Bucharest’s unique architectural language. With each iteration in time, its evolution and the nature of its spell become more and more apparent.
2. First wave
There is beauty in the mosaic. Taken individually, these objects might annoy, repel or even offend the viewer's standards for architecture. However, when seen as a whole, larger than the sum of its parts, their will to exist becomes difficult to ignore or reject - they do not seem to require validation from an outside system in order to keep on coming into being.
These balconies will never show up on a Dezeen newsletter. No one is handing out Pritzker prizes to these people who were so eager to design, build and take care of their own little box. Moreover, they are heavily scrutinised for putting themselves in danger. The city didn’t and still doesn’t care 13, while they just keep mounting on its inability to lead.
3. Possible current state
Of course, this is an exaggeration. But how far away are we from this state? I’m trying to show that we can inform ourselves through what the city tells us, rather than through what we tell the city to be - which is what official, coordinated conscious design (that Bucharest lacks thoroughly) is supposed to be. Shouldn't there be a feedback loop?
Let us look at people’s own habitats as though they are nature itself.
4. Future states / Uncertainty
I think that this phenomenon is not being properly addressed. As with the human body, we tend to forget that our cells are alive - each with their own function, metabolism and lifespan - and it makes sense to disregard the cell when the body is in control and knows what it's doing. However, the city does not know where it's headed, and things like these go unnoticed. Bucharest’s “organs” seem to function separately and towards no common urban focus. Of course, without coordination or support from the parent entity, people will act on their own, and willingly design their own habitats. Like human bodies, these buildings carry a sort of “virus” through the inhabitants themselves.
Not all of these extensions are dangerous. Some of them might change their "genetic makeup" and become fashionable and sturdy enough for them to be adopted by middle class families, or cool enough for young, soon-to-be apartment owners. Without a strategy, they might take over the urban realm completely (as the image above has generously postulated) or be lost forever as another small dent in the globalisation of architecture.
Two possible courses of action. Integration or Refusal.
By now, I hope I have convinced you that these objects are a thing in their own right, and that they can be prized (hopefully!) as a true vernacular architecture.
Let's say that, for whatever planning reason, you need to tackle this phenomenon. Maybe you, as a city, want to capitalise on this uncoordinated mosaic and turn it into a beautiful, recognisable part of your identity, and consolidate your inhabitants' realities into your own. As such, you cannot handle it as a part of conscious ("official") planning, and must evaluate it as a separate entity. This is assuming that you don't want to take the short route, as in demolishing them completely and forget it never happened - sorry. You would need to approach them with care, and integrate them into the conscious city. Let's not forget that, for example, covering up graffiti doesn't make it go away, it would pop up somewhere else the next day.
Let's say that, for whatever planning reason, you need to tackle this phenomenon. Maybe you, as a city, want to capitalise on this uncoordinated mosaic and turn it into a beautiful, recognisable part of your identity, and consolidate your inhabitants' realities into your own. As such, you cannot handle it as a part of conscious ("official") planning, and must evaluate it as a separate entity. This is assuming that you don't want to take the short route, as in demolishing them completely and forget it never happened - sorry. You would need to approach them with care, and integrate them into the conscious city. Let's not forget that, for example, covering up graffiti doesn't make it go away, it would pop up somewhere else the next day.
What are the common design "rules"?
In order to approach it with a sensitive planning strategy, this entity needs to be "compressed" and defined, just like any large set of data, using different levels of abstraction. Too much information needs rules. This same principle is applied in population studies, where each individual marker is much less relevant than their combined averages. For example, we might try to describe a common stylistic and visual vocabulary and know (at least) what to look out for.
The process of integration will be detailed in a future article. There are many resources available to clean these up, consolidate the buildings or design new ones with the possibility of letting people safely and independently carry this forward.
The process of integration will be detailed in a future article. There are many resources available to clean these up, consolidate the buildings or design new ones with the possibility of letting people safely and independently carry this forward.
I would now like to address that this phenomenon might be very hard to "control", in case the city decides to choose dreaded Option 2, and try to get rid of it.
I believe that these objects have more to do with themselves than with those who actually made them come into being. The reason why I kept bringing up this hidden force, drive, will, spell, is because it really is there! Earlier I mentioned the word “virus”, partly because it might be useful to think of these structures as self-replicating machines - or memes.
Memes can be described as low information ideas that "use" their hosts (usually humans) to replicate. These things will multiply regardless of their value of “truth”. The easier it is for a meme to replicate, the more it will adapt to its hosts, and vice-versa. The simpler the idea, the more it has a competitive edge over others that are more difficult to grasp. Douglas Hofstadter talks about viral entities, their hosts and the referential feedback loops between them in an 1983 article “On viral sentences and self-replicating structures”. He enthusiastically explains that some of these entities can sometimes “take on a life of their own and drive their own propagation”!
The meme only has to “work” in its local context, in order to replicate - again, it does not have to be truthful in an architectural or a planning context! Self reference happens when two systems (which do not have to be isomoporphic) have enough similarities on which the viral entity can draw upon in order to produce an image of itself.
So what we’re seeing are not “true” architectural objects, but do the objects care that they are not "validated"? No! They will find a way to adapt, like graffiti on a wall.
Casa Poporului / People's Palace - What happens when you try to treat symptoms instead of the root causes
Obviously, I haven't talked about the third method of dealing with it, which is just to ignore it, but I'm here to create fiction.