The 1974 systematization law was mainly concerned with a new obsession of
Ceausescu, the urbanization of rural Romania. It concerns Bucharest as well,
because it had an impact on the dynamic of the relations between the city and
its suburban villages, as well as the strict limitation of the urban perimeter.
The requirements for urban density in housing ensembles increase and this, in
return, leads to what is called “the thickening” - placing new blocks of flats in the
perimeter of previously designed ensembles. While some signs of densification
requirements were previously noticeable and were taken into consideration
when designing housing areas, the solution of “the thickening” defies most of
the principles employed until then.
The 1975 streets law was, apparently, a benign law concerning the size of
streets and roads. In fact, some of its provisions on the principles of building
along the streets are extremely impactful. Housing ensembles must have inner
courts (somehow reminiscing of the cvartal) and façades facing the street - so
no more free-stranding blocks, cardinally oriented. Also, the height of the new
blocks of flats increases, changing the skyline of the city.
This prompts a discussion in the professional milieu on the importance of
the street as urban space. It might seem that the international critiques
on modernism are mirrored in this decision and that the street would be
reevaluated as an essential component of urban composition. But in fact this
was not the case. It would be a rather forced speculation to see a postmodern
attitude regarding the street in this law, because the resulting image is not
a reinterpretation of the traditional street, but rather of an uneventful,
characterless prospect.
The 1977 earthquake - reason for radical change in systematizationThough some of the ideas that Ceausescu was going to impose were already
more or less “announced”, the disastrous earthquake that occurred on
the 4th of March 1977 gave him all the reasons to start a reconstruction of
Bucharest. Demolitions and reconstructions, new monumental principles for
urban development and new structural requirements would change the way
Bucharest looked.
Early in the aftermath of the earthquake, in a meeting on the 10th of March,
Ceau şescu was already talking about a new political and administrative center
for Bucharest and by the 22nd of March he had envisioned a semicircular square
and a boulevard and settled for the Arsenal Hill. That was the moment when
some of the ideas of the 1935 plan came to attention once more: the same
location was chosen for a new parliament building back then. Odd coincidence!
Though in the beginning he seemed to listen to the professional opinion on the
repairs and consolidations needed for the buildings affected by the earthquake,
the scale of the intervention startled him. So, a few months after some of the
affected buildings were in the process of extensive consolidation, he changed
Bucharest’s urban planning instruments during the communist regime:
systematization sketches, plans, projects and interventions