Fig. 6
Project for the Municipal Palace,
architect Petre Antonescu, 1912.
(Lascu, 2011)Many aspects of the plans are worth being discussed in detail, but more
relevant for the present paper is the interest for the urban aesthetics which
was transposed in these regulations. A separate chapter dedicated to this issue
appeared for the first time, considering that “aesthetics is not a luxury, but a
necessity, such as hygiene”^16. The aesthetic aspects were linked to the idea of
function: “The city must be beautiful. It is an essential thing. But beauty cannot
be achieved through finery and ornaments with the only role of beautifying,
but through the judicious, rational, utilitarian design of all the elements that
shape the city”^17.
The image of the urban space was meant to represent the capital as head of
the nation, but also the ruling power. Out of all the various projects of this
period we will address only a few examples that we consider more relevant in
this process of representing the nation through the urban space – namely the
projects for the civic centre, the squares dedicated to the kings and the war
monuments.^18
In search of a centreIn time, Bucharest developed as a polycentric structure based on the former
mahalas and parochias, and for a long period it lacked a single centre that
would represent the prestige of a capital. In the past, the symbolic centres
were the areas of the Mitropoly and the Royal Court which were the religious
Monica Sebestyen