PAVILION

Bucharest and its Utopia
I feel it's imperative that Bucharest should be
reconstructed; I have tried to sketch a new
urban orientation that can be perceived as
utopian.
In fact, urbanism is an art that should scrutinize
into the future. The city builders lacking foresight
will be always left behind real life. Until
they spot an urgent need coming up, hundreds
of them are hovering and this sort of laggard
race in the cavalcade of time is somehow ridiculous.
Urbanism demands drastic, daring solutions
able to anticipate future needs. Its material
is huge, its means are revolutionary, while its
plan needs be utopian.
If our liberal age imperatively demands a policy
to reorganize the social, economic life, architecture
is just beginning to think about it; urbanism
can be defined as directed architecture.
Although it wasn't known as a science, urbanism
was tightly connected with the art of building
in all cultures, for all peoples. Starting with
the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Romans,
through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, until
the last century, the art of tailoring Cities was a
geometrical application on the ground.
You will find the rules of geometry wherever
man's mind invented things and its hands chiseled
them, that is, the straight line, pure surface,
and simple volume. This is why Khorsabad,
Peking, as well as the Renaissance towns and
those of Louis xIV created order by means of
geometry.
Only the barbaric ages - the dark Middle Ages
and the unhappy 19th c. architecture - avoided
geometry. Such cities that sprawled at random
represent a regression of human conscience
and art. Being a compelling factor, geometric
order checks the individual freedom and favours
the community interest, its free development.
The late 19th century liberal democracy wasn't
[362]
Marcel Iancu
propitious at all for urban development. Most of
the Western cities, created in the Middle Ages,
throve at on amazing speed during the lost century,
a thoroughly disoriented time in matters of
architecture and urbanism. The traffic problem
was added up to that of city extension.
In Paris, for instance, there was on annual average
growth rate of 6,000 vehicles between 1890
and 1910, and since 1919 the annual rate
amounted 80- 100,000. Between 1800 and
1900 its population grew up with 1,500,000
inhabitants, while in the following 30 years it
added almost one million souls. This is true for
all the European capitals, not only for Paris;
they all showed this spectacular growth. Why?
The machine made human production grew ten
times more; the factories attracted the proletariat,
the cities intensified their race for new outlets,
while traders sought for markets; due to the
machine, man increased his time off ten times
by creating speed and means of transport that
shrank space.
This speedy development found a decadent,
unprepared architecture and a greenish urbanism.
The problem of city development was made difficult
by the traffic problem; in New York, when
the skyscrapers pour out thousands and thousands
of people into the black and narrow
streets, the traffic is jammed. Then what's the
use of one-way and cross-road traffic signs,
once you have to stop every 150 steps. It is a
well-known joke about the American who is said
to walk on top of stuck cars, where ladies have
enough time to knit a pair of socks at every
street corner.
There is no measure taken against the increasing
traffic flow, no regulations to forbid higher
buildings in the town centre, no land expropriation
to widen the streets, there is nothing at all
to show the extent of the modern city tumultuous
life indeed.
In the very moment of the deepest anxiety,
when apparently there was no way out, when
the city noise became unbearable, when a comfortable
and hygienic living seemed impossible
to reach, when the aesthetics was compromised
and urbanism made prisoner, then the
modern thinkers highlighted some unexpected
and wonderful prospects for the cities of the
future.
Everything that has already been experienced
by the Western big cities, has happened to a
certain extent in our own country, and if not, it
will occur very soon on a large scale.
Almost against its own will-and less due to its
awkwardness - Bucharest has changed its spirit;
whoever happens to visit it after twenty years
can hardly recognize it. Obviously, our city
favoured a new life form and overlooked those
old art vestiges like the Old Saint George
Church and Colțea Tower that could have
embellished it.
We undergo a stage of full recovery. The buildings
in the commercial centre grow higher and
higher; the old and uncomfortable houses make
room far central "blockhouses", while the very
few courtyards and gardens vanish every
minute.
If we move on at the same pace set after the
war, then we'll find ourselves burdened with all
the shortcomings of the Western cities but without
their monuments and art vestiges. So, we
are likely to face the lack of light, green spaces,
heavy traffic, endless traffic accidents, as well
as the problem of endless lotting with infinite
streets, cul-de-sacs, associated with the lack of
economic means to refurbish the utility system
over such a vast territory.
The urban-planing undergoes a severe crisis.
Architecture itself chose the new style. Who
hasn't felt the perfect tuning of this geometrical,
non-decorative, sober style with the mechanized
life we are all sharing today? Who would
ever consent to a different way of life, once he
has tasted the utility of simplified forms comfortable
life, not necessarily luxurious, as one might
think, but imperatively showing our "urgent" way
of living?
To love the past doesn't mean to paralyze the
present. If you are for a Romanian architecture
it doesn't mean that you should fabricate it out
of the blue, as it has been attempted several
times. What we might label as a Romanian style
will come out as the effect of a long process of
adjusting the lively forms to specific local needs
and choices.
For the moment, we can see that the same
technical, economic conditions, the same social
structures, the same materials, the same transport
means, the same sports and pleasures, the
same books and clothes, the same news and
shows make our capital a true European city.
Today the cities are not only markets for the
regional production but also places for peoples'
exchange of spiritual values, which makes them
share the same problems and shortcomings
almost simultaneously. However, there is a difference
with us.
Luckily, Bucharest is a young town, at the
beginning of its urban growth, and thus spared
of the exaggerated architectural development
that led to the unhealthy and overcrowded
Western towns during the last century. Should
we pick up again the same chain of mistakes
that the Western countries already experienced
and finally had to learn their lesson?
Our love and caring for the city makes us try to
avoid this useless experience. It is only our own
shyness and hesitation in urban-planning that
could keep us from making Bucharest a model
city, a wonder city. We all witness its true shaping:
the hour of the Directive has come. It's not
too late. The Association of Bucharest's friends
and us, the architects of today, assume a more
serious responsibility since we haven't debated
on its master plan even at the eleventh hour.
What we can do in Bucharest today, it cannot be
achieved in the future.
Modern style demands modern urban planning.
[363]