Miruna Stroe
Fig. 5a
The Palace Hall square plan.
(Courtesy of the Arhitectura
magazine image archive, Union
of Architects of Romania)one of the main goals of the political system that, for the first time in history,
takes care of the proletariat. Thus this care and social importance of the worker
must be acknowledged in the representative squares and boulevards, which
are no longer composed only of administrative and/or cultural buildings, but
of blocks of flats.
Visually, the return to modernism is obvious and, in the case of the interventions
in the center of Bucharest, it blends with the interwar image of the city.
The urban squares situated along the N-S axis are all subject to renewal projects,
though not all realized: Piața Scânteii (nowadays Free Press Square), Piața
Victoriei, Piața Nicolae Bălcescu (geographically in the center of Bucharest,
destined to house the National Theater), Piața Sălii Palatului (Palace Hall
square) and Piața Unirii. The Palace Hall square deserves a special mention, as
it is one of the most explicit expressions of political ideology embodied in an
urban space. Situated behind the royal palace (transformed into the National
Art Museum in 1950), it opposes the former representative urban space in
front of the Palace, together with other cultural and administrative buildings
(the Athenaeum, the Internal Affairs Ministry, completed only after the war, the
royal foundation, hotels etc.). Its main components are blocks of flats in a quite
dynamic composition and the new congress hall, parasitically connected to the
palace. So, a public meeting place destined for political congresses (though
it could also function as a concert hall), surrounded by workers’ apartments,
this is the quintessential ideological urban gesture. It is also a remarkable
architectural accomplishment of the time, regarded and paraded as such in
publications and international exhibitions.