1 00:00:04,190 --> 00:00:08,720 Bucharest is my city. I can't stand it, but I also love it deeply. 2 00:00:08,720 --> 00:00:16,130 It's hard for me to imagine living somewhere else. It is a city in which each historical year fights with all the others. 3 00:00:16,130 --> 00:00:27,440 It's a city made of superposition. Every player came and tried to do unto the others and then make its own perfect work, and none of them succeeded. 4 00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:37,880 This is the third episode of the Disobedient Buildings podcast and Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project at the University of Oxford. 5 00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:46,970 Our focus is on the everyday lives of the people living in three European countries the UK, Romania and Norway. 6 00:00:46,970 --> 00:00:50,840 My name is Gabriela Nicolescu and today I take you to Bucharest, 7 00:00:50,840 --> 00:01:01,850 where I speak with Ștefan Ghenciulescu editor of Zeppelin magazine and lecturer at the University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest. 8 00:01:01,850 --> 00:01:04,820 Talking about different historical layers of the city, 9 00:01:04,820 --> 00:01:14,030 about impoverished owners and the ghettoisation of southern parts of Bucharest, and about cars, traffic and pollution. 10 00:01:14,030 --> 00:01:22,430 Zeppelin is a platform for architecture and design and and the city it's built up starting from the magazine, 11 00:01:22,430 --> 00:01:28,130 which is which we started the more than 20 years ago. It was called the differently then. 12 00:01:28,130 --> 00:01:34,730 Then we started also to do exhibitions and research works and books and interventions in the city. 13 00:01:34,730 --> 00:01:36,410 So now it's extremely broad. 14 00:01:36,410 --> 00:01:44,660 It ranges from architecture to research to curatorship, all the other things that you can imagine around architecture. 15 00:01:44,660 --> 00:01:49,370 It's also it's a small team, and then we are very much into collaboration. 16 00:01:49,370 --> 00:01:58,670 Most of our recent projects are done in collaboration with other institutions, organisations, people and and so on. 17 00:01:58,670 --> 00:02:05,540 So what kind of stories to say about Bucharest? But my stories about Bucharest are always about the layers. 18 00:02:05,540 --> 00:02:08,900 We are very much into talking about history. 19 00:02:08,900 --> 00:02:15,950 We felt frustrated already 15-20 years ago that the magazine is always about the contemporary and the now. 20 00:02:15,950 --> 00:02:24,410 For us, it's important to talk about history, but not about history very much in an academic way, but about history in a productive way. 21 00:02:24,410 --> 00:02:28,550 A lot of the things that we publish and most of my architectural work, 22 00:02:28,550 --> 00:02:34,010 which is not about design an exhibition is about older buildings and what you can do with them, 23 00:02:34,010 --> 00:02:37,590 even if they're not heritage buildings and still not protected. 24 00:02:37,590 --> 00:02:43,310 There was something very important happened at the beginning of the 16th century, which was that the sultan, 25 00:02:43,310 --> 00:02:49,730 which was the sovereign also of the account, which was the principality of Bucharest, was the capital. 26 00:02:49,730 --> 00:02:56,870 Forbidden City was. And this was very important because the city did not evolve like every typical European city, 27 00:02:56,870 --> 00:03:02,390 which is very compact, intense in its walls and then grows a little bit. 28 00:03:02,390 --> 00:03:12,580 It's developed from starts freely like cities do today. 29 00:03:12,580 --> 00:03:20,590 Even in the beginning of the 19th century, the city was extremely large, it was larger than Barcelona at that time, with very different densities, 30 00:03:20,590 --> 00:03:29,860 a very heavy core and then a lot of very important streets that went into the territory and in between them, a rural area. 31 00:03:29,860 --> 00:03:38,740 So not the typical city and then the countryside or the city, the suburb, the countryside, but the mixture of city and countryside all the time. 32 00:03:38,740 --> 00:03:44,920 And then you have the development in the 19th century, which is the 20th century which had to deal with it. 33 00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:49,420 And then of course, you have socialist when you have especially Ceausescu. 34 00:03:49,420 --> 00:03:54,070 And the thing about Ceausescu was that he wanted to race down completely the existing city. 35 00:03:54,070 --> 00:04:02,260 That was his project. What he did was not raise big chunks of land, except for the most important part of the projects. 36 00:04:02,260 --> 00:04:11,020 But he would actually build new boulevards, country boulevards or enlarge existing ones and then build roads of concrete blocks of flats. 37 00:04:11,020 --> 00:04:15,610 And the idea was to go further and further and into the territory behind them. 38 00:04:15,610 --> 00:04:20,920 But he wanted to have the the vista, the Potemkin think immediately. 39 00:04:20,920 --> 00:04:25,360 So now if everybody walks or drives through Bucharest on their main streets, 40 00:04:25,360 --> 00:04:30,460 you would think it's a city completely gone in the 70s and 80s and extreme. 41 00:04:30,460 --> 00:04:38,560 Bucharest, you are always on a big boulevard. Maybe everything is compressed, everything is energetic and everything is loud. 42 00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:45,790 And then you turn towards Twitter, you are in some kind of village. I think that it's fun. 43 00:04:45,790 --> 00:04:51,500 It's fun. How many people leaving blocks of flats in Bucharest? 44 00:04:51,500 --> 00:04:59,020 More or less we could. We could be sure that about 70 percent of the people in Bucharest live in this kind of housing. 45 00:04:59,020 --> 00:05:05,440 And I think the first thing that somebody has to get when you speak about housing 46 00:05:05,440 --> 00:05:10,270 in the socialist countries is that it's not social housing that should be stated to in a 47 00:05:10,270 --> 00:05:14,980 very powerful way because social housing is housing that is subsidised by the government 48 00:05:14,980 --> 00:05:20,830 for certain social categories and communities which have problems having their own home. 49 00:05:20,830 --> 00:05:24,460 Of course, that was also the case in the socialist housing with some of these blocks. 50 00:05:24,460 --> 00:05:28,640 But the main idea is that it was housing for everybody, especially in Romania. 51 00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:37,020 You didn't have any legal alternatives to build or very few legal alternatives to build individual houses because after a certain point, 52 00:05:37,020 --> 00:05:44,080 I think it was also forbidden. But some of the socialist housing was done by built through credit, 53 00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:51,910 so people took credit in what we could have a credit in the socialist system and then they had their own apartment as the property. 54 00:05:51,910 --> 00:05:58,660 Even then, housing in the city and urbanism and architecture are tools to build this new society. 55 00:05:58,660 --> 00:06:02,470 And so they they were very ideological and very politicised. 56 00:06:02,470 --> 00:06:06,880 And this was the idea which makes for some very interesting developments. 57 00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:14,980 On the one hand, you have in all of these neighbourhoods, you have a mixed city that was never achieved in Western countries, 58 00:06:14,980 --> 00:06:20,530 its social housing because you really had the doctor and the worker and the policeman and the teacher 59 00:06:20,530 --> 00:06:26,350 living in the same building at practically the same apartment because you couldn't have it otherwise. 60 00:06:26,350 --> 00:06:30,820 But regardless of the architectural typology, always what it is. 61 00:06:30,820 --> 00:06:35,450 Also very important is that even if the buildings and everything is private in this building 62 00:06:35,450 --> 00:06:41,350 because they have privatised the land is public and this is extremely different from, 63 00:06:41,350 --> 00:06:46,420 let's say, the more traditional of the capitalist city in which you have very clear plots. 64 00:06:46,420 --> 00:06:53,080 Then you have private land and public land, and then you have the way that people transform this land, 65 00:06:53,080 --> 00:06:58,780 even if it's not theirs in an administrative legal meaning. 66 00:06:58,780 --> 00:07:01,990 And this means that this blank slate and you shall have these buildings on, 67 00:07:01,990 --> 00:07:07,660 it's actually also changed and it becomes a kind of disjointed puzzle of individual territories. 68 00:07:07,660 --> 00:07:16,240 But legally, it's like that it has to be said that it now for these kind of buildings now represent communism for most of the people. 69 00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:21,730 If they think in a symbolic way when they see block, they mean this kind of blocks. 70 00:07:21,730 --> 00:07:30,070 So it's the representation of communism. As funny as it sounds for the architects, especially the photos, it is a Western model. 71 00:07:30,070 --> 00:07:37,090 My father worked at Rome Waterbury. He was an architect who was a very young architect who did the urban plan with the colleague. 72 00:07:37,090 --> 00:07:44,590 And they had done they had had their school in the 1950s, selling their socialist realism, which they hated. 73 00:07:44,590 --> 00:07:49,190 And for them at the beginning of the 60s with this liberalisation period. 74 00:07:49,190 --> 00:07:52,910 They actually for them, it was to do these blocks of flats in green. 75 00:07:52,910 --> 00:08:01,270 It was not doing socialism. It was doing it like in the West. And the had actually Swedish magazine said you have to be present at or in 76 00:08:01,270 --> 00:08:07,240 Europe to look at how things are done with prefab fabrications and so on. 77 00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:15,190 And of course, they went to France, but they also went to the Nordic countries because not some countries were so strong on this kind of thing. 78 00:08:15,190 --> 00:08:24,850 So it's a I think it's funny that what is today's the population was a symbol of communism was for the architects of the time, 79 00:08:24,850 --> 00:08:39,340 a symbol of liberalisation and of reconnection with the West and of reconnection with the modern modernist tradition in Bucharest. 80 00:08:39,340 --> 00:08:47,080 We have sent research packs and sending letters, writing cards, you know, 81 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:51,950 having all these materiality and contact with the people with our participants. 82 00:08:51,950 --> 00:09:04,060 So one of them sent to us back sealable dust bag full with dust that he collected from his window. 83 00:09:04,060 --> 00:09:11,830 He lives in this block, which is facing DeVita Boulevard with a lot of traffic. 84 00:09:11,830 --> 00:09:20,380 And I think it's interesting to try to include the fact that the quality of of the life of the people 85 00:09:20,380 --> 00:09:26,230 who are living in these blocks and in these apartments is not only something that has to do with, 86 00:09:26,230 --> 00:09:36,040 you know, the structure of the building with the type of apartment with maintenance, but also with the quality of air with a space around the block. 87 00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:40,090 And we, you know, the city as an organism. 88 00:09:40,090 --> 00:09:47,110 Some people say there are more cars in Bucharest than people. It has to do this, of course, with public policy and the lack of, let's say, 89 00:09:47,110 --> 00:09:54,220 the perfect public transportation and bike lanes and all the rest, but also with this obsession with cost. 90 00:09:54,220 --> 00:09:56,620 And there are definitely more important than everything. 91 00:09:56,620 --> 00:10:03,460 So there are people and of course you have to look in which people ask themselves for the authorities to 92 00:10:03,460 --> 00:10:09,820 come and cut down trees because they are birds sitting in those trees and which are trashing their cars. 93 00:10:09,820 --> 00:10:18,340 You know, so it's it's obvious that the social priorities are the city cannot take care. 94 00:10:18,340 --> 00:10:22,420 I mean, there is no parking space possible to have for all these cars. 95 00:10:22,420 --> 00:10:26,230 I mean, even if you would like to, it would be it would be impossible. 96 00:10:26,230 --> 00:10:30,280 So you will have to shift to something else. But what can I say? 97 00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:35,290 It's it's the cost of taking over a green space. The cars are taking over sidewalks. 98 00:10:35,290 --> 00:10:39,940 You ask them why they were parked there and they said, but there's not no place else to park. 99 00:10:39,940 --> 00:10:43,910 What can I do? You know, they are very sensitive. 100 00:10:43,910 --> 00:10:49,790 See, I know it's not a good thing, but it's like it's a kind of Greek tragedy faith thing. 101 00:10:49,790 --> 00:10:58,660 You know, they they have to park there because there's no nobody gives them a good parking spot, and so they have to park on the on the sidewalk. 102 00:10:58,660 --> 00:11:01,840 There was a lack of the municipality to do this, 103 00:11:01,840 --> 00:11:09,100 but it's also the lack of will is it has to do with populism because if you have Dutch cars, your we will get in big problems. 104 00:11:09,100 --> 00:11:15,880 But I think mainly because those people in charge from starting from the government's door to the last guy in the administration, 105 00:11:15,880 --> 00:11:21,150 they're totally into it. So they really believe that they believe in this car. 106 00:11:21,150 --> 00:11:25,990 So they would if they can't understand why should the should they work against the car? 107 00:11:25,990 --> 00:11:28,810 Because this is not the way they feel and they do themselves. 108 00:11:28,810 --> 00:11:36,700 And this goes from a national strategy that has completely left out the railway because the railway in Romania is for poor people. 109 00:11:36,700 --> 00:11:43,060 That's people who don't own a car. For me, it's fascinating that that you see people today. 110 00:11:43,060 --> 00:11:46,360 On the one hand, they have these sustainability discourse, and on the other hand, 111 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:52,030 they're totally into the what was hot and what was good in the 1950s and 60s. 112 00:11:52,030 --> 00:12:01,150 And and but in Bucharest, as the all other socialist countries, you know very well that they privatised everything in the 90s. 113 00:12:01,150 --> 00:12:09,470 So we are a society of almost I think you remain an L.A. five percent of the people on their house, which is enormous here. 114 00:12:09,470 --> 00:12:17,560 Everybody owns them and they are all on the market. So this adds a new layer because their attractiveness is very different and you have to. 115 00:12:17,560 --> 00:12:22,600 For me that there are two basic factors when you buy an apartment here in Bucharest 116 00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:27,760 that you look after is the earthquake is one because people have started to see that. 117 00:12:27,760 --> 00:12:39,520 And then the position, the location is the other. And then you have the same kind of, let's say, concrete panel prefab block type a built in 1975. 118 00:12:39,520 --> 00:12:47,320 If one is in a neighbourhood which is further away from the centre, then maybe its price is two thirds of the land located in the central area. 119 00:12:47,320 --> 00:12:55,960 So I think that what happens is the kind of hidden ghettoisation in which people, which the richer they become, they tend to. 120 00:12:55,960 --> 00:13:00,400 Even if you talk only about the socialist blocks of flats, they tend to move towards the centre. 121 00:13:00,400 --> 00:13:09,550 And people who are older and cannot afford to live there anymore are moving more and more to the outskirts if everything is in private property. 122 00:13:09,550 --> 00:13:16,750 But people are going to be poorer and poorer, the ones that are going to be to have these properties so cocaine will intervene. 123 00:13:16,750 --> 00:13:22,930 In what kind of mechanism do friends to go to to aid poor people which own their house, 124 00:13:22,930 --> 00:13:30,250 which is something completely different from council estates in Berlin, in England or or in or in Norway? 125 00:13:30,250 --> 00:13:34,810 How do you deal with this kind of generalisation, which is is not really discussed now, 126 00:13:34,810 --> 00:13:49,270 but which is undergoing in this fashion has a stealth way for a lot of fun. 127 00:13:49,270 --> 00:13:57,070 I'm also interested in this topic on on property, especially in relation to the ageing of blocks and the fact that, 128 00:13:57,070 --> 00:14:02,770 you know, in the eventuality of other and other major earthquakes, 129 00:14:02,770 --> 00:14:08,680 I'm going to share with you some some materials from my research I brought with me a letter 130 00:14:08,680 --> 00:14:15,120 that one of the participants in Burton wrote in this research packs Manuela storytelling, 131 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:20,140 in which an answer is the following when asked to say what worries her. 132 00:14:20,140 --> 00:14:30,470 She said a possible new major earthquake similar to the one in 1977, which shook seriously Bucharest from the ground. 133 00:14:30,470 --> 00:14:38,050 It can happen that blocks that were built in the 60s early 60s might be heavily affected. 134 00:14:38,050 --> 00:14:42,400 So what happens to all the people who own a flat? 135 00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:52,000 Yeah, it's an urgent thing. It's actually a disaster. We tend to focus on the ones in the first because they're the most endangered one once. 136 00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:58,510 And this is true. I mean, it's the risk if you live in a 1940s building, it's much larger than if you live in a socialist block of flats. 137 00:14:58,510 --> 00:15:07,390 Of course, it's clear that she's a very sensible lady. I think you really have to ask and to push them to ask them about what you think about the 138 00:15:07,390 --> 00:15:13,480 common spaces and what to think about what happened with with the land around the blocks. 139 00:15:13,480 --> 00:15:17,320 A lot of times we also ask them when when we had this kind of, you know, 140 00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:23,800 our research and most of people answered, we need more parking space, even old people which didn't own a car. 141 00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:31,720 They said, Look at all these cars need space. It's it's. And nobody told us about the meeting, 142 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:41,770 or maybe one in one in 20 sometimes say that they need that they would like to have a communal space or a new park and something like that. 143 00:15:41,770 --> 00:15:49,210 Most of them really are really into this kind of kind of thinking into their own, into their own little problems, 144 00:15:49,210 --> 00:15:55,570 which is a disaster because everybody makes their own improvements in their apartment and usually they stop 145 00:15:55,570 --> 00:16:01,510 at the front door and sometimes in a block of flats which where the hallway looks like like horrible. 146 00:16:01,510 --> 00:16:04,420 It really looks like a very, very bad space. 147 00:16:04,420 --> 00:16:10,960 And you would think that people living there are really at the bottom of society and then you get into the apartment and it's like Alibaba's covered. 148 00:16:10,960 --> 00:16:18,760 Everything is clean. But actually, when you get on the ground, it's a puzzle of very, very different areas, some of which are completely let down. 149 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:29,830 Others are occupied because costs are more important in Bucharest and people and some, I don't think to gardens and things like that. 150 00:16:29,830 --> 00:16:34,750 The problem is for any kind of rehabilitation is that you have to bring people together, 151 00:16:34,750 --> 00:16:40,510 and that is the case of Romanian society today that nobody wants to do something together with the others. 152 00:16:40,510 --> 00:16:47,980 We are still in this kind of of pendulum movement from, you know, everything was had to be supported. 153 00:16:47,980 --> 00:16:54,280 So total authority to nobody's authority and you have this explosion of individualism that started in the 90s. 154 00:16:54,280 --> 00:16:56,170 And we very we are completely in it. 155 00:16:56,170 --> 00:17:03,920 So everybody would like to do every improvements they could on their own thing, but not to do something with the others. 156 00:17:03,920 --> 00:17:08,830 It still felt that if you do something together with others, it's kind of a waste of money. 157 00:17:08,830 --> 00:17:17,710 So how can you bring to make rehabilitation like they did in Germany out there, like they doing in Britain when you have one owner? 158 00:17:17,710 --> 00:17:23,590 It's it's quite easy. You know, it's not easy because of the money, but it's quite easy in a way to have. 159 00:17:23,590 --> 00:17:38,260 We didn't have hundreds of owners. Thank you for listening to the Disobedient Buildings podcast edited by Anna Andersen and produced by Jack Soper. 160 00:17:38,260 --> 00:17:44,020 If you want to hear more, go to our website WWw disobedient buildings, 161 00:17:44,020 --> 00:17:52,930 dot com or search for our podcast where you normally find your podcasts in the next episode, 162 00:17:52,930 --> 00:18:01,240 and Anna Andersen takes you to Oslo to speak with Maker's Hub founders as Else Abrahamsen and Jack Hughes. 163 00:18:01,240 --> 00:18:10,176 What is the impact of participatory urban design projects for young people?