Planning Capital Cities

Maria Duda

Shifts. A brief history of public plazas in central Bucharest

In basic terminology, shift is defined as both (ex)change and movement; on
one hand implying a configuration change in a concrete way, as manifested
in a formal, constructive and functional manner, and on another hand, on an
abstract level of interpretation, a mutation in the perceptive significance of an
object or place, a transition of symbols.

When we look at the urban relationship between Bucharest’s central public
plazas throughout their evolution, we identify shifts both as material
modification of limits, and as displacement or interchange of points of interest.
This paper focuses on the five central plazas form, their interdependencies
and roles within the city, and also follow them individually, looking at the
transitional replacements between singular built elements and representative
buildings: how the change in one of them triggers the shift in all the others.

Following the aforementioned brief definitions, we inventory designs and
transformations of central public plazas, having taken part 1846-2013, in five
chronological chapters: 19th century introduction of modern city regulations
and the shaping of central Bucharest, (1846-1911), the beginning of the
domestic urban theories and the welcoming of the modernism, (1911-1944), the
communism and the screening off of former values, (1945-1989), transitioning,
in between searching for identity reviving and catching up on the missed years,
(1989-1997), the re-establishing the role of the public space, (1997-2013).

With criteria branched out into two main partitions: physical ones - formal
shape, functions, use, representative buildings, and ideological ones - political,
symbolical, theoretical, we shall analyse the consequences of design choices
onto the city’s morphology and the urban user’s habits.

In the end, the article constitutes a basis for a better understanding of the
current status of the central public plazas of Bucharest, resulted from the
commented series of intentions and interventions.

Abstracts