Miruna Stroe
his mind. All the repairs were going to cost copious amounts, if done by the
specialists’ requirements. So in another meeting of the Central Committee on
the 4th of July, he enforced minimal repairs, instead of consolidations for all
remaining affected buildings, thus sealing their fate.
At the end of that year a detailed research on the center of Bucharest (Studiul de
delimitare a zonei istorice a oraşului Bucureşti) was completed and published.
It was supposed to be the base of strategic development, but it was never used
as such. The study was based on research conducted in the history department
of the “Ion Mincu” Architecture Institute.^16 In fact, another legislative change
would further simplify the political control over the systematization of
Bucharest, by the establishment of the Commission for Architecture and
Systematization of Bucharest in 1978, by decree.^17 By this gesture, Ceauşescu
directly subordinated the architects and urban planners to his own will. From
now on, the development proposals would be drafted overnight, following more
and more absurd requests from the dictator. A radical change in Ceauşescu’s
view on demolitions prompted the beginning of the most traumatic stage in the
history of Bucharest.
Authoritarian and violent urbanism - the 1980’sThe 1980’s are probably the most notorious period in the urban transformation
of Bucharest, largely discussed not only in Romania, but also internationally.
All planning resources were concentrated on the megalomaniac civic center
project, while entire areas of the city were wiped to make room for the
monumental political and administrative ensemble. A general strategy for
Bucharest was missing, but at the same time the scale of the intervention
affected the urban fabric to a general extent. The search for a new “national
architectural style” was reiterated, with unsettling memories from the Stalinist
period. Ceausescu was massively involved in all decisions of the project,
requiring countless variants and 1:1 scale models, in a more or less conscious
attempt to minimize every architect’s professional self worth. The inhabitants,
whose welfare he was previously so concerned with, were very affected by the
demolitions and the presence of a large-scale building site for a decade on a
surface of about 485 ha.
The project was shrouded in mystery and no public debates were organized.
The Arhitectura magazine did not publish proposals or articles on the subject,
though most architects from Bucharest were involved one way or another with
the project. In the beginning there were 17 teams that drafted proposals for
a private viewing. The “competition” (again, not a public one) was in the end
settled between Cezar Lăzărescu’s and Anca Petrescu’s teams. The outcome
was surprising, as Cezar Lăzărescu was an established architect, with a lot of
political influence and Anca Petrescu, on the other hand, was a very young but
ambitious architect. Ceauşescu chose Anca Petrescu, most probably because
he felt that she would comply with his every whim.