BETA 2018 competition_Architecture essays

competition.betacity.eu

Submitted essays, Category 6

Architecture essays

List of the essays entering the competition 1.

ESD04 / Daniela Negrișanu / THE DWELLING AND THE DWELLER. TOWARDS AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF INTERIORITY

2.

UTA45 / Paul Vladimir Văleanu / COLLECTIVE HOUSING: CROSSOVERS FROM NOW AND THEN

3.

DRG14 / Gențiana Cristina Dumitrașcu / BUILDINGS’ DIARIES

4.

BRC78 / Radu Ciprian Bulc / QUALITY OF LIFE IN COLLECTIVE HOUSING

5.

ABC31 / Teodora Iulia Constantinescu / THE JUST CITY – A PHILOSOPHICAL LENS ON THE RIGHT TO HOUSING IN THE MODERN CITY

6.

CLO20 / David ALexandru Dumitrescu, Andrei Chindriș / A NEIGHBOURHOOD. A HOME. 20 YEARS

7.

DOT00 / Robert Blaga / HOUSING, FOR WHOM?

8.

ARP23 / Andra Raisa Parpala / WHAT IF THEY WERE | RECONSIDERING (SOCIAL) HOUSING IN BUCHAREST

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DANIELA NEGRIȘANU

THE DWELLING AND THE DWELLER. TOWARDS AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF INTERIORITY

As an excerpt of a bigger study, this text is evaluating the dwelling as a process, using the interiority as an analytical anchor. Architectural theory and practice are often criticized for stereotypical image of the habitation as an exogenous object, eluding what interiority has to offer. Centering the act of dwelling on the human subject, there can be revealed a complex dialogism beetween the two, disclosing a deeper individual reality, emphasized by each other’s co presence.

Residential homeostasis, as the internal state of balance, is a tool of intercepting this fascinating relationship. Gathering all internal regulation processes, it seeks internal balance for individual and residential group, adjusting in the same time the residential shell, through the inside/ outside osmosis. On a temporal level, the adjustment between past, present and future and between family dynamics correlates expectations with residential ideal, bringing them in harmony with what present has to offer.

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Epistemology of interiority.

Figure 1 – Home (photo by author)

„… I build the urn around the perfume, so that the perfume stays within.‟1 The excerpt above has a certain echo within each of us, as its impact lies in the unordinary gesture. According to this statement, interiority, as a determinant core, gains priority over any other associated logic. From this

1

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Citadela. București: Junimea, 13.

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perspective, the dwelling becomes a semantic halo, shaped around its inhabitants. The degree of relational reciprocity that can be generated between these two poles is the one that can make the difference between a static inclusion (Sein-In) and an authentic, assumed inclusion (In-Sein)2. In an ideal scenario, the dwelling and the dweller provide each other a voice 3, defining each other ontological.

In fact, what would dwelling be without its dweller?

The relationship between the dwelling and the dweller is not a relation per se. Essentially contextual, it manifests itself and evolves under the influence of a series of exogenous factors which confer it, one by one, a certain relational specificity. These widest (and the most researched) influential levels are connected to the generic background of the habitation and the inhabitant, contextualizing this relationship. In Hong Kong the dwelling process is radically different from the one in Australia.

Figure 2 – Average surface/ inhabitant (reproduction by author) 4

Narrowing the scale of determining factors, we get to the lowest level of direct influence (as a matter of fact, the most neglected as well), represented by the reciprocal relationship between the two, the habitation and the inhabitant. Through the transactions they conduct, they become subject to a sophisticated network of reciprocal determination, which

2 The terms Sein-In, In-Sein excerpted from Martin Heidegger. Sein und Zeit. 1967. Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen.

3 Mikhail Bakhtin in Aliona Grati. Romanul ca lume postBABELică. Despre Dialogism, Polifonie, Heteroglosie si Carnivalesc, 2009. Chișinău: Editura Gunivas.

4

Source: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house, accessed on 14.07.2016.

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generates, through particularization, the uniqueness of every residential/family system. A nuclear family with democratic, permissive family relations, will carry out entirely different residential narratives compared to a nuclear family with strong and rigid hierarchical relationships within the same home. Consequently, how could housing theory and practice elude this level of influence?

From the perspective of this different paradigm, as the title itself suggests, dwelling is meant to be an introjection of its interiority. It redefines itself in terms of value starting from within, contrary to some current stereotypes of architectural practice and theory. Dwelling is often accused of placing itself in an autistic and self-referential posture5. The architects are accused of displaying a self-sufficient attitude, a „prince complex”6, which legitimizes personal conceptions, without any reference to the final user. Such tendencies can only lead to a narrow, reductionist vision. In order to give a fresh boost to dwelling, theory and practice should both be cut loose from the exogenous, simplistic logic, focusing on what interiority seems to have to offer. This text puts forward a dwelling epistemology from its interiority7, by placing the inhabitant in the center of interest, with the aim of redefining values for housing. In this scenario, the human subject becomes a treasured resource for the dwelling. Once identified, understood and highlighted, the interiority can only boost dwelling’s potential.

5

Juhani, Pallasmaa. Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of Home. 1992.

Amaral, Camilo, Prince Complex. Narcissism and Reproduction of the Architectural Field, 2015, This Thing Called Theory. 12th International Conference of the AHRA, Leeds, UK.

6

Epistemiology of interiority, author’s original syntagma, defining the dwelling knowledge related to dweller(s) that resides inside it.

7

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Residential homeostasis.

In day to day life, the relationship habitation/inhabitant unfolds on several levels which, though familiar, are often intertwined and hermetic. Trying to identify the way they work is close to impossible without implying social sciences and humanities.

Any physical or emotional gesture between the habitation and the inhabitant, regardless of cultural and social differences, is eventually justified by the same objective, that of achieving some balance between the two, meant to offer residential/ familial satisfaction and in extenso life satisfaction. In order to define this complex processuality the dwelling and the dweller get involved in, the syntagm residential homeostasis has been chosen. Taken from medicine, the term homeostasis defines the property of an organism to maintain the constants of the internal medium within a close range. Systemically speaking, all organisms tend to operate in a state of balance. Homeostasis sets in when all the variables come to a relatively constant stable state8. Similarly, the phrase residential homeostasis defines the internal adjustment to habitation of an organism, so that regardless of the alterations taking place in the external or internal medium a state of internal stability is aimed at. Any stimulus capable of amending internal homeostasis will be perceived as pleasant and any stimulus that alters it will be perceived as unpleasant.

A series of transactions identified within the family can be interpreted accordingly. All these internal adjustments are meant to set, maintain or restore a certain state of balance. When evaluating the family-residential system, one can observe a series of internal adjusting mechanisms, which allow triad adjustment between the individual, the group and the dwelling factors. Regardless of the way in which mechanisms are metabolized within

8

Dixie Meyer, Sara Wood, Bethany Stanley. Nurture Is Nature: Integrating Brain Development, Systems Theory, and Attachment Theory in The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families. 2013. Vol. 21.

Issue 2. 163.

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habitation, regardless of the macro- and micro systemic differences they may involve, these mechanisms are developing on the same levels, to correlate expectations and permissiveness, ideal with real, past with present, interior with exterior and individual with group.

Figure 3 – Residential homeostasis (graphic by author)

Residential homeostasis has to do with adjustment between individual and family group, between interior and exterior, mediating the inside/ outside osmosis. The family and the individuals amend the porosity of the residential membrane until it reaches, even here, the convenient state of balance. On a different ground, the adjustment past/present/future correlates expectations with residential ideal, bringing them in harmony with what the present can offer. Similarly, on the time scale, adjustment is also needed in the family and habitation dynamics, taking over various changes of the residential group.

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Individual/ group. „The whole is other than the sum of the parts.”9 A first residential homeostasis indicator is given by the way in which the relationship and the dosage between the individual and the residential group is managed, in terms of habitation. Inside the house, every person bears the mark of his physical, cognitive and emotional aura, shaped by his own personality and by the family-hierarchical permissiveness. A series of trades permanently take place, conferring the relational mark of the family.

The way in which the personal and group narration develop depends on the simultaneous fulfillment of several premises, strictly controlled by family hierarchies and spatial availability. Spatial identity and belonging, territorialization, control, spatial privatization, introjective and projective operations, relational and emotional processes all contribute to this individual and group identity construct, within every dwelling. The way these take shape in the residential landscape is radically different, yet the principle is the same. The need to carry out one’s own narration manifests itself, in most cases, side by side with the need to mark the identity presence at the level of the residential group. One of the greatest qualities a home can be endowed with is that of allowing individuals to simultaneously place themselves, internally, both physically and emotionally in an autonomous position, as well as in one potentially cohesive one.

Ku t Koffka, uoted by Dewey, R.A. 2007. „Psychology: A i troductio : Chapter four - The Whole is Other tha the Su the Parts”.

9

of

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Figure 4 – Privatisation and control within the dwelling (photo credit: Lucuț Cristina)

It is precisely this cumulative hypostasis between I and we, this continuous mediation between part and whole that poses a real residential challenge, often ignored, which residential satisfaction depends on. Dwelling and the way in which it negotiates between self and group places the individual in relation to the world and to others10.

10

Irene Cieraad. At Home. An Anthropology of Domestic Space. 1999. New York: Syracuse University Press. 144.

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The house as a porous textile.

Even though it brings to attention an old topic of architectural poetics, the inside/outside dialectics is evaluated here from the dwelling/ dweller perspective. The house membrane separates two worlds. On the one hand, it separates the house from the external world, from „our house’s home”11.

On the other hand, there is the interiority, the core, with everything it involves. This coating has to simultaneously fulfill two osmotic prerequisites: it has to be permeable enough so that it allows breathing from and towards outside yet protective enough to allow both the collective and the individual intimacy of the inhabitants.

The amount of exposure to the external medium depends on a series of exogenous factors, imposed by cultural, social or economic determiners, as well as endogenous ones, related to family, individuals and relational constellations. The residential shell, through its opening to the public and semi-public space, determines the way in which the interior relates to proximity and the way in which internal relations become visible in the exterior. The definition of the residential textile and of the limit between intimate and public space (a role often attributed to the front garden) can also translate the way individual and group narrations are developing inside.

Tony Fry. ”Homelessness – A Philosophical Architecture”. Design Philosophy Papers Collection Three (ed. AnneMarie Willis) Ravensbourne: Team D/E/S. 2007. 19-28

11

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Figure 5 and 6 – Various negotiations of the house with public limit (photo by author)

In the equation of the complexity of the inside/outside dialogue there interposes the concept of interior layering, explained as the superposition of successive layers within. In the same habitable cell, internal adjusting of the individuals, to each other and to the group, reiterates internally, on a different scale, the same adjusting mechanisms they expose towards outside. Internal levels on different privacy degrees involves over layering or removing various protective membranes, in order to give autonomy or, on the contrary, strengthen residential group cohesion. All these successive levels of layering adjust internal osmosis, making it more exposed to other residential presences due to its variable density or, on the contrary, hiper internalized, as a result of its lack of porosity towards the others. Familyrelational configurations, hierarchies and family roles are controlling the way in which these layers adjust. A strongly hierarchical family will prioritize the division of spaces into autonomous cells, while a family with horizontal relations will prefer bonding spaces.

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Figure 7 – Taking over the house boundaries (photo credit: Lucuț Cristina)

The various layers of the house are in fact mediators between the individual and the exterior or between the individual and the group, as they decide the degree of spatial, sensorial and emotional continuity between the exterior and the interior or between different living spaces of the same house.

Individual residential satisfaction depends to a great extent on the way in which the coating, as the first protective layer, meets the needs and necessities of contact and permeability towards the exterior and towards other housing members. Here intervenes this type of homeostatic mechanism, adjusting what the exterior has to offer to what the interior needs to get and adjusting what the interior has to offer to what the individuals need.

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Mother-house. Residential perequisites. „A whole past comes to live in the new house...”12 In dwelling, personal narrations and affinities are, to a great extent, interconnected with previous residential experiences, especially with those regarding the mother-home from childhood. In variable degrees, the mother-home works like a referential prototype to other subsequent habitations. Consciously or not, the reference is done through duplication or distancing from the original prototype, depending on the quality of emotional experiences that have accompanied that first residential contact.

A series of studies in architecture and social studies and humanities analyze the impact with the mother-house. They reveal that there is a discreet, often unconscious connection between the initial habitation and the subsequent habitations, and there are similarities between the parents’ habitation and the subsequent ones belonging to the children turned into adults13. Pallasmaa mentions the possibility that the adult period habitations could be nothing but an unconscious search for the lost childhood home, with all its associated values14. Furthermore, there may be an interconnection between memories, nostalgia, the present state and the future expectations15.

12 Gaston Bachelard, quoted by Israel, Toby, Some Place Like Home. Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places, 2003, Chichester, Wiley- Academy. 1.

13

Clara H. Mulder, Nathanael T. Lauster. Housing and Family: An Introduction. Housing Studies, 2010. V:4. 434.

14

Juhani Pallasmaa. Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of Home. 1992. 7.

15

Findlay Alison. Remaking homes: gender and the representation of place. Home Cultures. 2009. 6:2. 116.

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I.Cieraad, in an exercise of imagination with her students, concluded that most of the assumptions regarding the residential future were directly linked to recurrent childhood images and to details of the habitation at that time 16.

Figure 8 – ”Me in my little home”. Three year-old child’s sketch (personal archive)

16

Irene Cieraad. Children's Home Life in the Past and in the Present. Home Cultures. 2013. 92.

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Obviously, this relationship is very difficult to identify and quantify, as it is equally difficult to understand to what extent the source-home influences the subsequent habitations. What is certain is that images or cliches associated to the childhood home come up recurrently in the adult’s residential depository. The symbolic image of the house is thus often associated to the maternal womb, as a symbolic guarantor of security and unconditioned protection17. Mother-home represents the locus of the self’s first adjustment to habitation.

This retroactive homeostatic repertory reverberates in the present habitation to the extent in which some gestures can be translate as residential regulation with the past. The homeostasic regulation with the past is often needed in order to be comfortable in present, to imagine the future and to validate our sense of self. Our first home offers us the first version of living which afterwards, through subsequent dwellings, we reiterate or amend.

17

Michael Allen Fox. Home: A Very Short Introduction. 2016. Oxford University Press. 61.

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The residential-family dynamics. „Habiter n’est pas familier, c’est l’insolite même.

Jamais lui-même. En transit.”18 Throughout time, domestic space and objects end up becoming witnesses of family life course19, placing the dwelling as an active part in this process.

The past-present-future dynamics highlights the need for homestasic adjustment on the temporal axis, in which habitation is a construct that can empower and support individual and group development in time.

Figure 9 – Family dynamics (stages taken from J.Zilbach (graphic by author) 20

Each stage in the cycle of family life is accompanied by functional specificity derived from needs, necessities, responsibilities and roles. Social studies identify a range of family development thresholds, which provide the ground for the explanations regarding personal and group needs connected to habitation, as well as to generational dynamics21. The preliminary stage, marking the detachment from the parental nest is succeeded by a stage of

18 Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe in Benoît Goetz. La Dislocation. Architecture et philosophie. 2001. Paris: Les Editions de la Passions.

Giorgi Sabina, Padiglione Vincenzo, Clotide Pontecorvo. Appropriations: Dynamics of Domestic Space Negotiations in Italian Middle-Class Working Families. Culture Psychology. 2007.13:2. 150.

19

Joan Zilbach. The Family Life Cycle. A Framework for Understanding Family Development. In: Textbook of Families and Couples Therapy. Clinical Applications. 2003. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

20

21

Ibid.

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coupling, in which the nuclear family or group is enlarged or consolidated.

The middle stage is characterized by expansions, separations or partial breakaways, while in the final stage the core comes back to the initial dimensions. The dwelling, in order to include human identities in a continual personal and relational dynamics, needs to detain the ability to take over all these becomings. Habitat, through its very physical boundaries, limits, allows or imposes on its inhabitants a certain way of living.

For all the types of family configurations, the residence needs a surface that can grow organically (possibly with detachable modules), reaching the climax in the middle stage, after which it decreases dramatically, compressed to the dimension of the conjugal stage. Within the same house along the life course, a major challenge of residential space is to accommodate the augmentation of needs specific to family’s expansion stage and the contraction specific to final stage.

Every family appropriates differently the space and spatially expresses family needs, differently regulates the relation between individuals and the group of residence, adjusting to internal and external dynamics. All these tactics confer uniqueness and individualizes the dwelling.

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In an ideal scenario, the house we live in not only comes to accompany our feelings and ritual events that are part of our daily living, but can also take over and compensate for internal and external dissatisfaction. In this hypothesis, dwelling and dweller manage, through complementarity, to complete themselves, defining each other ontological. The architect often appears as a factor that interferes with this relationship, thus influencing a substantial part of the residential and family habits, affecting housing satisfaction degree. Architects need to consider this relationship, to regard it as a process, as a continuum between the two sides, always searching, always adapting, always redefining themselves.

We live our homes and, in time, they end up living us. We give and take at the same time, both physically and emotionally, both ourselves and our homes. All these internal transformations accrue to the extend that they should be perceived as treasured perfume, around which architects build their urn.

Note: this text has been extracted and adapted after the PHD thesis of Daniela Negrișanu. ”Dwelling as family introjection”. Politehnica Timișoara Publishing House. 2018.

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VĂLEANU PAUL VLADIMIR

COLLECTIVE HOUSING: CROSSOVERS FROM THEN TO NOW

Collective housing in Romania was mostly built during the communist era and was the typical environment for my generation's childhood. I will try here to describe the place, mostly through some memories and experiences of my childhood, and through conclusions I can take, after working on a faculty study together with my architecture school friends. I will talk first about the in between blocks of flats space and its role as a public space (see article on the Mnemonics1 exhibition), then analyse the individual block of flats unit and compare them both with the classic modernist examples.

Finally, I will speak about the meaning of the expressions collective housing in relation with collective living and social housing, mentioning today's market driven tendencies for social housing.

Craciun Andrei, Tineri români care au cucerit lauri la Bienala de Arhitectură de la Veneția (article in Romanian) Young Romanians who have won Laurels at the Venice Architecture Biennale (own translation in English), [22.08.2018]; viitorulromaniei.ro; https://viitorulromaniei.ro/2018/08/22/tinerii-romani-care-au-cucerit-lauri-labienala-de-arhitectura-de-la-venetia/ [23.08.2018]; This interview is about Mnemonics, the Romanian project participating to the 2018 Venice Architecture Bienalle, in the pavilion competition, at the Giardini; 1

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Childhood From 1947 to 1989 Romania was under the communist rule. The great majority of collective housing was part from the newly designed dormitory neighbourhoods. They came as a solution for the accelerated process of industrialization, that focused mostly on the building of new factories around the urban centres. As a consequence, many peasants had to leave their old way of living in private owned rural houses, move in the cities and adapt to the collective living lifestyle.

• First time when I experienced collective housing I was a very young child, so, if I jumped too much on the couch the neighbour beneath us, Mr. Spiroiu, would angrily ring at the door and ask me to stop. For the rest the neighbours were not interesting at all, except for Victor, who I've met when I was maybe around 3. He was my age and living at the same floor, just in front of my door. His apartment became an extension of mine, since we were always playing and transiting from one to the other. My apartment seemed normal to me, while his, not at all. It was darker, with a scary African mask on the hallway's wall, with a specific smell of both sweet perfume and tobacco, and a black sink in the bathroom!? Both of us had their own room. I remember that we were playing inside either of them late in the evenings, blocking the door with furniture when our parents were coming to tell us that it’s about bed time.

When I was around five, I was allowed to play outside. It was a much bigger room to share with other children. Here I've met Răzvan. He was for a long time my best friend. We played close to my flat and built together cities for making wars between soldiers, cowboys and Indians (that fought together, because otherwise they would have been outnumbered by the soldiers).

When we were in a bigger group of friends, we played football together.

There was a kindergarten nearby, where we had to jump a fence to be able to play, only after the children of the kindergarten went home. We played

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football there until it was too dark to do so. Regularly, there were not so many kids playing, but sometimes, there were so many children that we had to split into more teams. Usually, every courtyard had its own team. I don't know if rivalry was born from here, but we never got along with the guys over the concrete fence. It was a forbidden territory that I was afraid to explore. When things became nasty a real war was happening, be it with mud balls, sticks or grapes. If during summer we played mostly in the courtyard, during wintertime we preferred to play in somebody's stairway.

Our courtyard had six of them, and we knew all of them very well. We used them both as shortcuts, since they had doors on both sides, and as places to meet and play. We were maybe 12 children in total, 5 my age. There were also girls that preferred to play here most of the time, including my sister who was 3 years younger than me. Still, when it was snowing all of us went outside. I remember that at some point, when it snowed a lot, somebody had the idea to build an igloo. There were maybe more than 20 children working at it, and curiously enough, our rivals, who were older than us, stopped hunting us for the moment. We've made it in the end and made also a fire close to it, using a dried Christmas tree as fuel.

InBetween InBetween2 is the title of a study we've made during our student years. This was our team: Alexandra, Anca, Bogdan, Clara, Radu, Roli, Maria, Sergiu and I, and as its name says, it was about the space in between the blocks of flats. The case study is on a neighbourhood from Timișoara, but this example is actually specific, due to its repetition, to the vast majority of Romanian condominium neighbourhoods built in the communist era (my childhood one included). It is a space which, on the opposite of the very

Radoslav R. (coordinator), Isopescu B., Piscoi C., Rigler R., Sabău S., Sgîrcea M., Spiridon A., Tomescu A., Văleanu P., In Between, Editura Politehnica , 2009; 2

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Figure 1 – Block entrance. Own made foto from Arad, Ioan Suciu street, 2018. An example of a present day very tidy Romanian block entrance, with own designed garden, benches, bike parking, etc.This cases are somehow rare, but maybe, in this case, the fact that at least the parking lots were delimited by a communal project, made the people in the area to look more after the in between the blocks space.

rational communist planning of the blocks of flats, has almost no design at all, as if the negative shape would be a left over space. La Ville Radieuse of Le Corbusier presented this ideal of repetitive figures floating in an incommensurable green ground space, as if the land had no specificity at all. Even if the tubular like space of the street wanted to be overpassed, while the city be thought from above, places still existed, when living in this type of space. But these images, as idealistic as they were, were not thought in time, as if change could never happen. Still, when analysing the neighbourhood, we understood that the in between space was abstract no more, as people started, especially after the fall of communism, to appropriate the space and adapt it to their needs. What they were doing by,

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extending ground floor balconies, building pergolas and benches, delineating gardens, was mostly illegal, but at the same time healthy for the life of the communities. The urbanistic thinking of the communists imagined that people would meet in the community centres of the neighbourhood, but the population, which was, in its majority, borned in rural areas, was not accustomed to formalities. In the context of a process of assimilation of the capitalist culture, where individuality had to be expressed, space got rapidly differentiated. What was for Le Corbusier the infinite background for architecture volumes, became here the protagonist of an emergent society.

Public Space Maybe it is not of a surprise that the same space became the subject of the Romanian pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale, interpreting the theme of the exhibition, Freespace, in Romanian terms and viewing the communal space between the blocks as a definitory public space. Even if the concept of Mnemonics3 is not familiar to me, after reading an article about the exhibition4, I was tempted to track my own memories from my experience of this space and used this subject as a catalyst for my text ideas.

Still, when entering this Romanian space of collage, it can feel ironical that it was first designed from the same functionalist standpoint that Gropius sustained at the 1930 CIAM, where space was nothing more than the minimum void that gave comfort to all individual apartments in terms of light, and maximum exploitation of the housing lot, showing the ideal ratios between every height and distance between the buildings. It was like a formula. Seeing the diagram, this space could hardly be imagined as filled with life.

3

see note 1;

4

see note 1;

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Nevertheless, we have to remember that these schemes appeared after the WWI, when Germany was in a difficult international position, one of the big problems being the housing shortage5. In this context, high efficiency was needed. Existenzminimum was both the slogan of the Neue Sachlichkeit for the 1929 CIAM and its subject, and wanted, through social housing, to give at least the basic dwelling conditions for every citizen. Nevertheless, the initial designs of the movement were more attentive to the needs of the dweller and to the public space: the siedlung of Haesler at Celle, the Georgsgarten (1924), proposed private gardens and shared functions as a laundry room, shops or a library, while Ernst May's Bruchenfeldstrasse (1925), at Frankfurt, had a zigzag pattern of condominiums, that formed a shared garden6. This was not the case for the great majority of the Romanian neighbourhoods, built during the communist era, that resembled more the later German examples. The situation changed after the 1989 Revolution, when people began to surpass uniformity through spontaneous interventions, this monotonous space getting its own identity. • My highest satisfaction as a child was to search or build places to hide. The Huckleberry Finn shelter would have been the ideal place to share with my friends. For a functionalist architect the rule would be to build 10 places to hide for children, if these have been on the brief. Instead, I wanted that with the lowest possible effort to find or build what I needed, in an already built environment. This was maybe the state of mind of the surrounding grownups. The space existed, the needs existed too. I agree with the idea of this space as a public space7, because it was a space of compromise. There

5

Silverman Dan P., A Pledge Unredeemed: The Housing Crisis in Weimar Germany, from Central European History, vol. 3, no.1/2, Mar/Jun 1970, p.112; published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society, page count 28, taken from https://www.jstor.org; https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545563?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents [04.09.2018]; 6

Frampton, Kenneth, Storia dell'architettura moderna (Italian version-Third Edition), Zanichelli Editore, Bologna, 1993, p.153, 154 (original title in English Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, London,1980,1985,1992); 7

This idea is mentioned in the interview from the cited article; see note 1;

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were plenty of people involved that wanted to use it in different ways.

Legally, it was neither private, neither collective property. It was the city's land. Some people needed places to rest and discuss, similar to the one in front of the Romanian traditional village houses, so they built benches in front of the blocks’ entrances. Flower gardens or planting grapes and fruit trees or even vegetable were frequent. This introduced a kind of private owning of the objects that brought conflict, if it was not sensitive to the others. For example, somebody from my courtyard marked a private car park and introduced a lockable barrier. Soon after, the neighbours forced him to demolish it, because car parks were only shared. The trees were another problem when some people didn't let us take fruit from them, defending them, even by throwing objects to children. Nevertheless, the delight to eat from these forbidden trees was the highest.

And this space was not monofunctional at all. The parking area we often used as a tennis court or as a football field or just as a playground.

Occasionally, when a wedding was happening, the same place was transformed temporary into a stage. The guests, together with a singing folk music orchestra, were waiting for the bride to descend from the block's stairway, in order to get into the decorated cars, that were driven towards the church. In the meantime, a cameraman and maybe a photographer were recording the event. Curious neighbours were gathering, while more discreet ones were only looking from their windows. There was no concept of multifunctional space behind this, but just people manifesting as they felt they should in different situations.

The Units We spoke about this space, but what about the individual blocks around it?

What was collective about them? My flat had a stairway and two storage spaces that were shared, usually used by the families at the ground floor, where they lied. For the rest, I don't remember to share too many things.

During Christmas time we went around carolling and received money

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instead. But, for most of the time you knew that the neighbours were around because of the unexisting acoustic insulation. You could hear them very well. If you have put a reversed glass on the wall, you could hear them even better. Identical apartments were stacked one on top of the other and random people put inside them. That was basically the idea.

• When using the term unité for his renowned building Unité d'Habitation, Le Corbusier was maybe thinking about two things: first about its unity and then, secondly, about a unit in a complex of repetitive units, as in his La Ville Radieuse scheme. Having the well-known pilotis, so just slightly touching the ground, it became more independent. Then, two interior double-height streets with shops were present, and also collective functions and a plaza like space on the rooftop. I think the idea was that the ensemble in its unity could work as an independent universe, working even segregated from the rest of the city. The functions were put together by taking and building the Russian avant-garde idea of the social condenser.

Then, there were the apartments, so the units stacked two by two in a scheme that involved 3 floors, with one and a half floors for each apartment, and an access corridor in the middle, every apartment having windows on both facades of the lamellar building, and also a double height living room.

When simplified, Le Corbusier's ideas looked horrible. Like any simplified architecture, when mass-produced, lacked the qualities that represented its advantage. Collective housing meant for Corbusier the shared functions, while sharing rituals was no more characteristic for a modern person. Every apartment unit worked independently, for the rest, the rules of the function were dictating the behaviour of the user, as the configuration of the whole Unité d'Habitation was dictating the behaviour of the dweller. This rationalist idea looked perfect on paper, but forgot about individual options, even if, on the apartment level, it managed to create a new urban lifestyle model.

On the other hand, the Romanian flats were either typified or adapted to the plots. They were comfort 1 to 3 in base of floor surface and other features, had 3, 4, 6, 8 or 10 floors, 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 5 rooms, but there was no

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identity at all. They were units that had to be built in order to fulfil the 5 year plan. This was for sure not for the sake of the people. These devices came from the machine age ideas, but in communism they were built not by illuminated artists (even if in the West this wasn't always the case), but by a regime that wanted to rapidly transform the cities into infinite landscapes of repetitive blocks: this was La Ville Radieuse accomplished.

Collective Housing But what do we understand now by collective housing? If we analyse it etymologically, we have the word collective, which means together, and housing that refers to the house, something usually individual. So maybe, there is an internal conflict between the two. In Romanian, the translation would be collective living. This would mean actually living together, so something like a community. In a community there is an exterior pressure on the individual from the whole group, because the member represents it, while for the more modern idea of society, there are individuals that are part of it and have a social contract with it. By oversimplifying the two cases, there are morals and laws.

What we usually have nowadays in collective housing are people, that share the same building because they don't have enough money to build their own house, or people, who like a more comfortable urban lifestyle, without all the house related obligations. What about the collective part, are there any benefits of living together with other people? Because money usually dictate the features of an apartment (as the surface amount, available personal car park, available elevator, design, vista, green space), people, in these configurations, would live with people similar to their social status, which is also dictated by money. This brings psychological comfort.

If the building or group of buildings is not segregated from the city, the collective functions are not wanted by the tenants, because this will increase both the price of the apartment and the utility price. Secondly, habits are also individual, so that the city can offer a much larger palette of

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functions for people that have money to spend. The apartment looks rather as a product where everybody wants some features for it, while for the collective part of the expression I don’t think I’ve heared many talking enthusiastically about it. People actually pay for comfort and don't want to be bothered by other people. And architects give them a design made of more or less intelligent plans and a facade that is attractive and status giving. In conclusion, in this case, the term collective housing is improper.

More often the emphasis on the collective part of the expression can be found in social housing, where people cannot benefit from the mobility and money spending of the middle class. Because of the lower amount of choices, they are more prone to collaboration and to taking care of their own environment. That is why communities rather happen to be formed here. But, if no incentives are given, the risk is that the neighbourhoods turn into ghettos. Still, architects seem to receive a better role here, where a good design has more chances to improve living. The 2016 Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena made a collective housing design where he left half of every house not build, in order to give motivation for a follow-up personal extension. This seems intelligent, as the owner could adapt the house to its needs. Taking the time factor into consideration seems normal, but it is very rare. I don't know if in this case the scheme worked, but I do know that for the Soarelui Neighbourhood8, that we studied, two simple rules did: allowing transforming ground floor apartments into shops and not being scrupulous about having private gardens on the public land, between the condominiums. This helped to make the area multifunctional and also increased the dwellers' involvement in the taking care of the outdoor spaces, improving in the end the quality of life (even if it worked, the gardens were not legally owned, finding a way to give them legally to the community would have been a plus). As for the collective part, the blocks courtyards were transformed into informal football fields or just places to

8

The study done in 2008-2009, and participated to the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009, is about the 80s built Soarelui neighbourhood in Timişoara, Romania. The study is based on a pattern structure taken from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977, and inspired

by Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of building, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979;

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gather. Especially in the warm season, people spent a lot of time there. The main idea is that any collective activity can happen only where there is a need for it and housing can become collective only when both the blocks of flats and the space between them can hold these activities. This can only take place when the logic is not entirely top-down, be it the state or a marketer at the top.

Closure In order to make it work, collective housing has to gain what my childhood neighbourhood had, a space prone to hold both rules and spontaneity. For that reason, architects should forget about doing colourful packaging9 and sellable images that can be used for the good of the investor and not for the good of the actual living. Collective housing is more than an individual apartment plan and a nice facade. It is also about a social vision, individual buildings or ensembles working through shared functions and in between spaces that manage to work as public ones. If we want to not only build collective housing, but to reach collective living, architects should not just adapt to the market, learning instead from what modernist architects like Le Corbusier had in mind: a social program and an individual standpoint from the start. Too many architects borrowed the postrationalisation habits from marketers, instead of having the courage to sustain own discourses and to test them into their work. They preferred the safe way that is risk free, but puts the profession closer to that of a service giver than to a respected field.

On the top of that, we should also learn from modernist mistakes that both over designed and idealized societies, not letting the dwellers to create their

9 Curtis, William J.R., Modern Architecture since 1900, Phaidon Press Limited (Third Edition), London, New York, 1996, p.604. Curtis is using this term describing the end 70s and 80s postmodernist architecture, these tendencies finding proper ground nowadays in the collective housing realm too.

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own places, by relying upon mechanisation and endless repetitions. Finding what is specifically human and can be shared by human beings are the only ways to start going towards a successful design of collective housing.

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GENȚIANA CRISTINA DUMITRAȘCU

BUILDINGS’ DIARIES A graphic tale about two architects living in a socialist collective housing unit vs. their experience while being involved in interior design projects for apartments in contemporary collective housing units

By designing and constructing a building, the architect shapes the life of the future occupant, and then, once in the use of the space, the owners shape the architecture created by the specialist. So, the building grows and lives with those who populate it, always adding a new layer, a new meaning, with every change they make. The buildings are never kept as the architect envisioned them.

Using the defining elements of the comic strip, the narrative element, frame, sequence and flexibility, as instruments, we will analyse and decipher the architecture and the different typologies of residents that inhabit and interpret the space of the socialist building block in which we are living for three years. In parallel, we will analyse and highlight some of the conclusions drawn from the involvement in a number of interior design projects of apartments in new residential complexes.

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Comics + Architecture = LOVE

The relationship between architecture and comics, not being a recent phenomenon, can shape its starting point from the moment when Le Corbusier manifested his fascination for Rodolphe Töpffer’s1 comics. The architect himself chose to use the graphic narrative in „Lettre a Madame Meyer” (1925), for the presentation made for his client, of the unrealized project of the Ville Meyer (Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris). In this project the architect explores the degree of variety that can be achieved in a single family home, illustrating using both image and narration, in a sequential presentation, consisting of fluid sketches, unframed, with similar proportions, depicting the indoor and outdoor space of the house, urging the client to examine the proposal space, step by step.

Emotional Theoretical context As the architect Florin Biciușcă explains in the book “ Experimentul Cățelu”, during the communist regime, the building block was supposed to be an equalizing element. In a society that did not want to be divided into social classes, did not want to take into account the differences that could exist between two families, being like a predetermined pattern in which all individuals who would populate the space had to clutter in order to carry out the activities imposed by the partitioning.

1

Luis Miguel Lus-Arana. La Ligne Claire de Le Corbusier. Time, Space and Sequential Narratives. Valencia: Le Corbusier, 50 Years later. International Congress. LC 2015, 2015.

In the 11th issue of the L’Esprit Nouveau number journal (1921), the architect Le Corbusier published the article, “Toepffer, précursor du cinema”, in which he analyses the work of the artist Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), who was considered an important pioneer of comics, who also had a strong contribution in the development of cinema. The article analysed the comic strips Monsieur Pencil, created in 1831 and published in 1840), and Le Docteur Festus, created in 1831 and published in 1846.

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At that time, when those living in individual houses were accommodated in the block of flats, that which in the first instance could seem very attractive, providing an illusory comfort, gradually becomes a constraining environment. 2 As the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu points out, in his article Block between place and habitation, where he analyses the particular case of a block in the Drumul Taberei neighbourhood, this sort of vertical arrangement was also conceived as a means of social homogenization, wanting to cancel the differences, imposing on the owners the same space. But the owners have managed to find unique ways to inhabit the limited space in which they were forced to live.

Thus, they gave a new interpretation to each room, like: the kitchen, which, although it was intended only for the preparation of food, had in same cases even a small bed,3 the closet became the father's repair shop, or in some cases risked being demolished to gain more space, the bathroom could either be a hairdressing salon for acquaintances, or laundry/ drying room, and the service sanitary group had the potential to become a dark room for an improvised photography laboratory, or became unusable, when the things that had to be stored in the demolished closet appeared in this space.

The constrained flexible space of „Tei” student dormitory

The architecture of a building brings people’s lives together. When an architect designs a house, simultaneously shapes the life of its occupants. The moment the

2

Florin Biciușcă. Experimentul Cățelu. Bucharest: LiterNet, 2005, 29.

3

Vintilă Mihăilescu. Blocul între loc și locuire. Bucharest: Revista de Cercetări Sociale, 1/1994, 76.

Vintilă Mihăilescu analyses in the subchapter "The kitchen and living room before 1989 ..." the social function that the kitchen had in the lives of the owners, before the Revolution of 1989, which sheltered, not only because of functional reasons, due to the lack of central heating, the family meetings and the friends meetings, leaving the living room unoccupied. The latter has a complete revitalization after 1989, when the family gathers in front of the TV, the socialization leaves the kitchen space for the space of the living room.

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client starts making use of the space, he also shapes the architecture, so the house starts living along the one who inhabits it, thereby constantly gaining a new meaning with every transformation it goes through. Starting from this idea, and trying to understand the space of a building which goes through a number of changes with each inhabitant, I thought about the dorms building of the University of Architecture and Urban Planning „Ion Mincu”, in which I lived for three years, while I was a student. I photographed each room, from approximately the same point of view, to observe the similarities and differences that resulted after different people occupied the same type of space.

Figure 1 – Room 128, photography by Gențiana Dumitrașcu

Some of the key elements of living together, captured in the photos, were still very fresh in my mind, from the time I used to live in a small dorm room with other four girls: the lack of privacy when five people live in an area so small, the importance of the student drawing table, which is certainly the centre of the architect’s universe, that is never to be touched by visitors, the desire to transform the room,

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making it a multifunctional space and using every centimetre wisely, the fear that someone from outside will judge the mess in the room, the tension of some students, thinking that their mum could see an ashtray in one of the photographs, excitement that the experiment takes place on their birthday etc.

Figure 2 – Room 128, photography and collage by Gențiana Dumitrașcu

Looking at the photographs we can observe, that the same space was interpreted in a number of ways, according to the inhabitants ever-changing needs: completely different floors, a variety of wood essences used, different shades of carpet, linoleum, old rugs, that were gifts from grandparents, rooms with one coloured wall, with two different coloured walls, or with each wall having a different shade of colour, with photos, vinyl, projects, or origami animal stuck on walls which are covered with pencils and markers drawings, drapes, blinds, linen or lace curtains framing the windows, beer bottles hanging from purchased or improvised lampposts, hammocks, bicycles, skateboards, pats of models, etc.

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Our building’s diary

Analysing the process of habitation and appropriation of space of the inhabitants of a socialist building block versus the one of the inhabitants of contemporary collective housing building, we decided to investigate the space of the socialist block in which we live in, discussing the ways in which each individual brings changes to the space he uses, whether it's the apartment's space, the balcony's area or the building’s staircase.

Taking into account the advantages that the comic strip offers to this process, we decided to illustrate the analysis of this small community, clearly divided between locals that moved in immediately after the building was finalized, in 1968, and „the newcomers”, a kind of intruders, including new owners and tenants.

The analysed 10 floors building, with seven staircases, is situated at the intersection between Câmpia Libertății and Baba Novac streets. Each staircase sums a total of 44 apartments. As the main façade is facing IOR Park, we were lucky to find an apartment on the 5th floor, from where we are able to enjoy, from our 10 meters long balcony, a wonderful view of the park. The building’s exterior finish is a composition between plaster and arranged portions of green mosaic.

The time frame in which we chose to conduct our analysis is the one that shows our building before it passes through the process of rehabilitation of the buildings’ facades. From the moment you came into contact with the main façade of the block, you could have a first contact with the multitude of ways of treating a given space to different owners: the balcony. As a first example of individual and collective adaptation at this type of space, the balcony, which receives the most interpretations in the socialist collective housing, also offered, when analysing our building, a complex performance. We must mention here: a wide range of materials and colours of the carpentry used to close the balcony’s space, a multitude of multi-coloured curtains used to decorate it, a generous number of flowers in pots, so often watered and carefully cared for by hardworking housewives, which were always shaking all the blankets they had, dusting everything, including the exterior air conditioner unit, or proofs of the passing fashion of exiling part of the kitchen’s appliances, especially the cooker and stove, on the balcony. There were also a small number of tenants who decided not to interfere with the way the space of the balcony was envisioned by the architect,

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keeping it open, and often furnished with beach umbrellas and lounge chairs. On the other hand, a couple of balconies were used as storage space for old furniture and other items, of which, for various reasons, the owners couldn’t part with. Each of them tells a story, each of them offers clues about the ones who inhabit the space.

Figure 3 – Our building, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

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The magical space of the staircase The staircase, which in Vintilă Mihăilescu's article is symbolically called „no man’s land”, for which the tenants do not want to take responsibility, to the administrator's revolt, being utilized only for the occasional use of groups of young people who meet to consume alcoholic beverages, draw graffiti on the walls, listen to music, in the case of our building the space is interpreted differently on almost every floor.

Of course, we also had groups of young people, eager to take refuge from the cold weather, sharing a beer and trying out their artistic talent, not yet thoroughly exploited, on the white walls, freshly painted by the administration. But, almost every floor tells a different story.

For example, the residents living on the first floor decided to barricade themselves behind metal grills, that separates their apartments from the rest of the staircase, a retired old lady, with a passion for cactuses, decided to share with the rest of the tenants part of her collection, placing carefully in the hall, 6 six cactuses of different shapes and forms (we also suspect her for the “beautifying” the elevator mirror using a picture frame with intricate decorations), a family on the 7th floor considers the staircase space as an extension of their apartment, always leaving with confidence, half of their pairs of shoes in front of the door.

Of course, each entrance is accompanied by a door mat, thus creating an impressive collection, which can entertain to the observer with pieces from the former Persian carpets, considered so precious when purchased, chopped up and downgraded to the state of a door mat. The staircase space is also where small talks between neighbours take place, in which even we, intruders who pay rent, symbolically named by permanent tenants „the newcomers” get to be involved.

There is always a retired lady, very vigilant, who seems to be aware of every move made by each tenant, the neighbour who is always too upset, convinced that you wanted to cause a flood just because you felt like it, late at night, the retiring neighbour who comes out every day to make small repairs to his car, or just to polish it, a multitude of cats and dogs that offer the opportunity to have a warm conversation in the lift, on a rainy Wednesday.

The staircase space also plays the role of magical zone, a distant relative of the Bermuda triangle, in which neighbours abandon for a short period of time the things they want to throw away (an old table, a chair that they can’t find useful

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Figure 4 – The magical space of the staircase, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

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anymore, hangers, etc.) in the idea that before depositing it at the corner of the building, where the trash gets taken, one of the neighbours might want it. It is a silent agreement between the ones that offer and the ones that receive.

Gigi & Katerina, a fragile love story. Investigating the built space using 49-year-old letters

This is the true story between Gigi an Katerina, as it is was presented to me in 25 letters, notes and greeting cards, that I found, scattered in the snow, in front of our building’s entry, on a cold February morning, in 2017. The building where we have been living for more than 3 years is part of the City Hall program, which rehabilitates the buildings’ facades and changes the old window carpentry with a new, white and shiny PVC one. This action is an attempt to maintain and repair the image of the collective dwellings, built during the communist era. However, during this program, all changes made by the owners to each corner of their properties are removed, and also their stories are becoming harder to read. In order to complete de change of the carpentry, the owners of the apartments were asked to empty their balconies, except for the elderly occupants who, for a fee, let the workers carry out this task.

On the morning of February 17, in front of my building’s entry, among the snowdrifts, construction materials and old junk, that now seemed insignificant and was expelled from the owners’ life, we found a number of sheets of paper spread in the snow. Very quickly, I realized that they were, judging by the colour of the paper and the calligraphy used, old letters. It seemed cruel to me that once precious memories, carefully kept until that moment, would have this end, swept up by the boots of workers, in the cold snow, so I gathered them in a hurry. In the following days, I dried them, put them in order and I tried to unravel their story, because, apart from a date written on a greeting card (July7, 1969), there was no other information that could help me to easily establish the chronology of the events. That is how our detective work started. All the letters were written by Katerina, a young, fragile woman, to her then boyfriend, Gigi. The love notes, which later became letters, followed the evolution of the lovers’ feelings, as well as the burden of Katerina’s complicated disease, burden shared by the two of them.

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Figure 5 – Gigi’s apartment, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

Their story walks the reader through a number of architectural settings: the little shoe repair shop in which they first met, the cinemas they went, the polyclinic which Katerina went to much too often, the shop in which they both work, her bedroom, where she falls asleep every night, with Gigi in her mind, the train station where she always waits for her mother, who comes to take care of her poor health.

We started looking for the two protagonists, to find out if they are still living in the building, but neither the owner of the apartment which we live in, nor any other neighbour had heard of any of them. The letters seemed to belong to no one. The sweet sadness, the complicated clues of the illness described, the constant fear and dilemmas, as well as Katerina’s tumultuous feelings haunted me for a long time. From all her letters we can outline a long-awaited world of Bucharest in the 60s, which is definitely worth exploring in detail and does not deserve to be forgotten in the snow.

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Figure 6 – Katerina’s universe, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

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One of our “main suspects”, during our shy investigation remains our next door discreet neighbour, almost ghostly, always wearing colourful caps, which strongly contrast with his sober outfits. We still believe, to this day, that he is Gigi.

Where is the storage closet? I want my storage closet back!

When we take into discussion the way the space is used in contemporary collective housing units, we could underline the following directions, traced from the experience gained by participating in the implementation of interior design projects conducted in such apartments: -

Young families with a child or two, with average and above average income, acquire 3 or 4 room apartments. They are those who want a complete separation from the tumultuous and gaudy Bucharest, choosing residential ensembles from the North of the Capital, where there is the mirage of closeness to nature, of a select lifestyle, away from the possible mischiefs encountered in the socialist building block (the neighbour who listens to a certain kind of music much too loud, adolescent rebels who draw graffiti on walls, intrusive old neighbours). If the old residents of socialist blocks still support the idea of the little community, developing and maintaining close relations with their neighbours, those who buy apartments in the new collective housing units want to leave these habits behind;

-

The owners are delighted that the purchased apartment has new finishes, which are later changed in the process of the interior design project;

-

The desire to bring back the abolished closet space, even multiply it;

-

The desire to open, in most cases, the kitchen space, giving a larger area to the living room;

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Figure 7 – Apartment 1, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

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Figure 8 – Apartment 2, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

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Figure 9 – Apartment 3, illustration by Gențiana Dumitrașcu and Andrei Dumitrașcu

-

The desire to take into account, in the design of the project, the possibility that the family needs may change over time (the office can be turned into a bedroom for a future child, or the office space becomes a dressing etc.).

We can observe the need to keep at least part of the architectural project flexible;

-

If the young families want to buy apartments outside of Bucharest, being delighted to be able to carry out much of their life there (the kindergarten, the gym, a number of shops being present in the residential complex), young single people want to purchase apartment in the centre of Bucharest.

A possible conclusion. The need for a flexible architecture

Architects such as Yona Friedman, who in the early 1960s promote a new design process, architectural visionary groups from the 1970s, such as Archigram with Walking City project, Archizoom with No-Stop City project, Super-Studio with

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Superface project, but also recent examples such as the proposal of architect Alejandro Aravena, for the „half of a good house” in Chile, in which the architect designs only half the house, the rest being finished by the future owner, are recognizing that the ever-changing needs of the space user directs the arzhitectural process towards the realization of a flexible architecture.

Both in the case of the residents of the socialist building block, whose lives are woven into a small community, which bring new changes and interpretations to the space according to the needs of the family, as well as in the case of residents of new residential complexes, which apparently manifest discreetly when it comes to customizing the space used, there is a deep desire to make the space their own.

The user wants to remodel the space easily in every stage of his life, often without the architect's contribution, which can offer only one frame in these cases, where the general directions of the project are described.

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1.1 The issue with quality of life in collective dwellings.

Living is closely linked to human existence. There is a scale of values, which belongs to every nation, generations, families, and last but not least, to every individual. He creates his world around the living. The permanent trend of population growth put pressure on modern society: 1850 to 1.35 billion inhabitants, 1950 to 1.65 billion, 1950 to 2.51 billion, 1970 to 3.69 billion, 1987 to 5.00 billion, 2002 to 6.21 billion, 2018 - 7.6 billion Collective dwellings have been used since ancient times in all urban agglomerations. This type of habitation appears as a necessity generated by the very large population compared to the very limited space to use for living. Cities have grown faster, due to the migratory wave from the village to the city and from the poor areas to the richest regions. The Eastern European area remained in Soviet influence after World War II, has benefited from accelerated housing-building because it was also the desiderate of the communist ideology: „tool man” in „bedroom neighborhood” with a minimalist living. In capitalism, there was a similar concept of „dwelling car” or „dwelling plant”.

Thus, the forced industrialization of the cities has created the need for labor and, implicitly, the states have started extensive programs for building entire neighborhoods in a very short time. The living spaces were undersized, rooms in a row, minimal spaces for bathrooms and kitchens, prefabricated thin walls, in many places the heating was made with individual apartment stoves, there were no storage rooms or storage areas (to discourage private initiative), no parking places, insufficient play and leisure space and facilities. Besides these problems, the concept of living together generated a type of home that could not be disconnected from common utilities: there were no water meters on the apartment, only at block level and the consumption was paid according to the number of members of the family, the central heating was also common and paid according to the surface of each apartment. However, the working class accepted the lack of privacy, storage space, the lack of the right to become

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the owner and was pleased that the city offered them or their children hope for a better future.

They were not able to build each one their own home, and the commute was difficult. Nevertheless, the payment of a rent for apartment is not a problem and offers several advantages: they are close to the workplace in the industry, have access to utilities (water, sewerage, gas, electricity, public transport), space is sufficient for young families without pretensions, there is an increased comfort compared to rural areas.

The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 21st century brings a recurrence trend for the human scale, to assure the illusion of individual living even if it is part of a collective houses. Also, the spaces from the ground floor are used for complementary functions: public catering, services, education, culture, storage. It is mandatory the green yard, which can be in interior or in lateral. In fact, it tends to reinvent the human relationships lost in modernist architecture. Buildings need to be closer, with few levels, with meeting places or discussions for neighbors, practically a small community of owners of all ages, as well as a village where everyone knows each other. Schumacher's conclusion: „man is small, so small is beautiful”. The human scale thus becomes a measure of ethics, equity, identity and belonging.1 Increasing the quality of life in terms of collective living is a current issue for the major metropolises of the world. The effects of agglomeration are reflected in: diversity increasing (- origin, social class, education, lifestyle, etc.), decreased accessibility and availability of services, decreased social mobility, personal affirmation focus. This, in some urban centers, is also due to the lack or poor understanding of the need and use of public spaces. These are social contact points, direct human interaction.

Such common spaces where there is no physical discrimination (including for people with disabilities) or social (access free to everyone), placed in areas where there is mobility and activity, increase interaction between the different social classes, leading to communities linking.

1

http://www.fundatia.ro/en/blog/scara-suprauman%C4%83-locuirii-moderneo-perspectiv%C4%83critic%C4%83 – Lorin Niculae 15 apr. 2014 Scara supraumana a locuirii moderne_o perspectiva critica_

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The quality of life, seen as a balance between the opportunities offered by the urban environment and its disadvantages, is increasingly difficult to assure. In order to maintain a high standard in parallel with density increasing, major investments in utilities, transport infrastructure, public spaces, etc. have to be made. When these costs become too high to be supported by the administration, the city loses its productivity and quality of life decreases.

Fig. 1 Overcrowding in big cities.

Fig. 2 - The cent of the speed at 10 km / h Contemporary human perception is that the living space must contain separate rooms for each activity, leaving the two large areas of the day and

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night with the subdivisions of each. Living area: entrance hall, dressing room, bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, office, pantry, laundry, garage, terrace. Night area: bedroom, dressing room and bathroom for each family member if possible.

In collective dwellings an apartment has an average of about 50 sqm.

This space should usually accommodate a family of 3 members, which, following a simple calculation, means about 17 square meters for each member, where both day and night activities are to be carried out. Reduced costs are the main advantage of this type of housing, therefore, because of savings, the quality it is generally compromised.

Due to these simple volumes, have been developed rigid geometry compositions that had nothing to do with land or human dimension. The creation of 30-meter rectangular fronts of gray (or worse-yellow, pink, green) is a little less elegant solution that negatively influences city life creating corridor streets that require a sense of obedience and repetition.2 Because of these physical characteristics, collective housings had a psychologically negative impact on both occupants and outsiders. Due to the lack of sound insulation, individuality and the possibility of expressing individuals is impaired. Lack of space influences the individual. He is pleased with a little, failing to reach his potential. Living in the block can lead to alienation and even breaking contact with fellow humans. In most cases, residential complexes feel an acute lack of green spaces, for recreation. In cases where they exist, they are generally dominated by the volume of buildings that always have the foreground, removing man from the natural.

Most collective housing units look about the same: cubic volumes of different sizes surrounded by parking area, systematized and relatively equal. Repetition is one of the greatest frustrations of modern human. The 2

http://www.bucurestiivechisinoi.ro/2013/06/calitatea-vietii-in-spatiul-urban-contemporan-dinromania. Studiu de caz – Locuirea colectiva in București 23 iunie 2013 Adrian Majuru Antropologia urbana, Antropologie

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habit, is decreasing the creativity and individuality. These, actually are the effects of a monoton life, lived in monoton blocks. Probably, the biggest failure of collective housings is at social level. Although it was an attempt for social alignment, with the purpose to link the social classes, the effect was not the one expected. It was not considered the need of human for privacy, a basic need, failure which had lead to serious consequences. In most of the cases, we can not speak about communities when we refer to the occupants of a block. They are aggressive in keeping their privacy in case of high density. They are suspicious and prefer to avoid contact with their neighbors. No one wants to know too much about him (when your child is making a noise, you prefer not to know it, to avoid reproaches). High density leads to separation (in a bus, the strangers do not speak to each other, but in the mountain where passers-by are rare, they greet to each other). This high density also leads to lower responsibility. When you are alone, you know you have to act, but when there are more, you generally rely on someone else to react. At block, this is transmitted through the poor quality of common spaces that do not interest anyone, as well as the lack of interest in common goods. To all of this we can add the „war” for the parking spaces and we can understand why most people living in the block look at their neighbors as enemies.

Although physical, psychological and social disadvantages are well known and felt by the majority of the inhabitants of Romanian cities, paradoxically, the trend is to create more and more such housing units, because in the capitalist system the demand is the one which creates the market. Even costs are not much lower than individual dwellings, and because of their low quality, their maintenance costs as much. They also have no advantages in terms of land use, because high density creates only agglomeration and can not take advantage of the high speed that is possible nowadays (in Bucharest the average speed at peak hours is less than 10 km / h when the car can reach a maximum speed of over 150km / h). Large-scale collective dwellings are outdated in many ways, but due to their popularity, they still have the highest demand. Perhaps it is only through legislation that this greed of developers can stop, which are the only ones to gain from these living quarters and will be able to move to

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another kind of habitation that will bring greater satisfaction and better conditions of live.

People / family Rooms / House

Useful surface

Built area

no.

no.

mp

mp

1

1

37,00

58,00

2

2

52,00

81,00

3

3

66,00

102,00

4

3

74,00

115,00

Fig. 3. Minimal surfaces according to Romanian law 114/1996 3 Like any law, it can be improved in the context of future socioeconomic changes. However, minimal areas can be considered by many to be quite small and the natural tendency would be to increase these limits.

For comparison, I will present the minimum floor space of new homes in the UK.

Fig 4. London Standard of Homes - March 2016 4 3

4

http://www.avocatura.com/ll600-legea-locuintei.html#ixzz4h6ZW1Yx9

https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/housing_standards_malp_for_publication_7_a pril_2016.pdf

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So, the square meters of Romanian law are relatively equal to the recent regulations in the UK. We suspect that in the Western world these minimal indicators have been conceived from reality ascertained in practice.

It can be said that although they have evolved into separate worlds (socialism - capitalism), there have been similar needs for space for collective living.

The vast majority of collective houses have to relate to a determined urban context. The ideal situation would be the planimetric and volumetric development in accordance with the different neighborhoods, respecting the urbanistic regulations of the area. Development in the depth of the construction site, between two blind walls and the presence of interconnected volumes along the entire length of the stradal tram are difficult constraints imposed by the context. Being in principle multi-storey buildings, respecting the street tramline configuration, related to the height and cardinal orientation, the main rooms can be oriented only to the street or to the inner courtyard. In some cases, the inner courtyard is directly connected to the ground floor with street spaces that can be used as semipublic space to open balconies. We can have successive courtyards or even volumes that mimes neighboring buildings and roofs. The dark mass of concrete is partitioned by the inner open space courtyard, generating the appearance of a canyon, straight from the entrance. Multi-family dwellings provide the benefits of a single-family home: small number of occupants, four-sided orientation, relationship with green spaces (garden). As a general trend there are two ways of integrating the architectural object into context: by similarity or by contrast, depending on the architect. 5

5

A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010 , Elie G. Haddad si David Rifkind , editura Ashgate 2014

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Fig. 5. Superblock "proposed by architects Hans Kollhoff and Christian Rapp in Levantkade 8, Amsterdam in 1994 6

Fig. 6. Balena, the building designed by arch. F. Van Dagen, Amsterdam 2001 7 6

http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line

7

http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line

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Fig. 7. Arch. Herzog & De Meuron, Rue de Suisses, Paris, 19962000 8

Fig. 8. SWECO Arkitekter, Tango Building, Malmo, Suedia 20039

Fig. 9 Sørenga Block 6 / MAD arkitekter 2016

8

http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line

9

http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line

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Fig. 10 Sørenga Block 6 / MAD arkitekter 2016

1.2 General assumptions for the improvement of collective housing Both the structure of the house and the structure of the city have proved, over time, capable of taking over all social, cultural, economic or political changes, remaining functional. The 19th century industrial revolution has sharpened mature structures for centuries, forcing them to operate improperly. Moreover, new structures of people's houses and settlements have been imposed to meet the new demands on labor productivity, but have come in a clear disagreement with the needs of the people. Alienation and the high rate of criminality seemed necessary sacrifices on the altar of technological progress. The 20th century housing patterns proved too rigid to provide valid answers and turned the new settlements (or old mutilated settlements) into true social bombs.

As a result of troubles faced by living in multifamily / collective houses and its unexpected social effects - a series of reformulations of the idea of habitation, centered around the idea of a small community (street, neighborhood). These are seen as transition formulas between the private and public domain.

The studies that architects have carried out, revalorizing in the process the existing structure elements of the village, fair and medieval city, have highlighted the existence of alternative formulas to live in neighborhoods with enclosures, with their own social / sacred space, autonomy in relation to the city, but taking part - of public life.

Sheltering, a defining element in the evolution of mankind, is in modern and contemporary coordinates a space for safety, relaxation and individual health. Although sheltering apparently means meeting the same basic needs, the occupancy of residential buildings is currently changing.

Architecture tends to solve new types of problems: communities, collectivities, relying on accepting cultural and taste differences, and emphasizing the importance of human emotions and perceptions.

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Fig. 11 PHD Architectes -Nantes 2015 10

Fig.12 PHD Architectes -Nantes 2015

10

http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line

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1.3 Conclusions The experiments and solutions of the 20th century, have shown that humanity can cope with an explosive increase in population. Architects find solutions to the needs of society and family. Collective living can be brought to a satisfying standard for most users if people's needs are always taken into account. The current comfort is much more complex than the requirements had 100 years ago. Factors such as: minimum required space, economic efficiency, reliability, privacy and independence, distance to points of interest, connection to nature, access to transport; should be taken into account when proposing collective living. People choose this form of cohabitation for a number of reasons: they do not afford to live individually, they want to stay in cities with fewer lands, the ease of maintaining such a home, etc. There are already the generations of the 60s who have lived all their lives "in the block" and can see that they have a normal life. Of course, for retired old people, collective housing offers very few leisure choices, but this can be corrected.

Local authorities and even developers are pursuing a diversification of recreational modalities for young people under 14 and elderly over 65.

Thus, besides playgrounds between blocks, small promenade parks or meeting venues. The active population benefits only at the end of the week.

The eternal problem of parking is solved through underground parking lots that may have the disadvantage that they are more expensive than the overground ones. Lack of privacy can only be solved by better isolation between the apartments and related to the „indiscrete eyes� in the neighboring block can only alleviate disturbance by limiting the minimum distance of 30 meters between buildings. Also, another factor that disturbs relations between neighbors is dependence on common spaces and facilities.

Collective living must be designed so that any individual unit can be completely disconnected from the utility supply without affecting the rest of the occupants. This means that the common spaces (corridors) are crossed by utility networks and the individual connection is made from the common space to each apartment. Thus, a bad debt will be disconnected and will not generate costs for other tenants.

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Another problem is the lack of storage space in the apartments that is now solved by the old owners by expanding into enclosed balconies. But by design it is possible to provide satisfactory solutions for increasing the storage surface. Also, many people have bicycles (two adults and one child). These bicycles can not be climbed on the upper floors eternally, and a specially designed space is required, individually divided into the ground floor of the blocks for such families.

Housing assemblies with complementary functions on the ground floor of the buildings are a beneficial solution for the comfort of the tenants.

The need for belonging to one place (my block, my neighborhood) can be satisfied by the diversification of the external architectural forms and their individualization. The more volumetric the inhabitants will feel a closer connection with their whole. Providing private and green interior courtyards also leads to intriguing community ties.

The more collective houses will offer conditions that are more like a traditional village, the more they will be looked for by a wider population.

That is, an enclave in diversity.

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Bibliography

-http://www.fundatia.ro/en/blog/scara-suprauman-locuirii-moderneoperspectiv-critic – Lorin Niculae 15 apr. 2014 Scara supraumana a locuirii moderne_o perspectiva critica -.http://www.bucurestiivechisinoi.ro/2013/06/calitatea-vietii-in-spatiul-urbancontemporan-din-romania-studiu-de-caz-locuirea-colectiva-in-bucuresti/ -.http://www.archdaily.com revista de arhitectura on-line .https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/housing_standards_malp_for_ publication_7_april_2016.pdf -.http://www.avocatura.com/ll600-legea-locuintei.html# -.A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010 , Elie G. Haddad si David Rifkind , editura Ashgate 2014

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TEODORA IULIA CONSTANTINESCU

THE JUST CITY – A PHILOSOPHICAL LENS ON THE RIGHT TO HOUSING IN THE MODERN CITY

Space is one of the most basic resources of population. The most striking feature of the 20th century, one of the very distinctive demographic developments that went along with population growth, was the increase of the proportion of persons living in urban areas. Modern economic systems need large cities to make optimal use of productive capacity in capital investment and workforce. Urbanization is one of the strategies of mankind to cope with the permanent tension between available resources and population growth and helps to make a more rational use of scarce land.

In the wake of industrialization, urbanization has been more or less a spontaneous process with one main by-product: housing. This paper discusses the need and right to housing in the modern city from a philosophical perspective, building on one main concept – the just city.

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Introduction The potential of cities to embrace differences and the multitude of possibilities they offer, allows us to consider them resources of materials, resources of life cycles, resources that have the capacity to regenerate within themselves1.

Thinking about recycling this resource in order to preserve its spirit, while expanding its degrees of freedom and potential, we think of creating liveable and sustainable environments, housing environments, that meet the sociocultural and socio-behavioural needs of people. How can we recycle cities?

By finding a theoretical frame, that is not general but can be generalised 2 by finding space of opportunity for communities, understanding the notion of identity in housing typologies, we challenge ourselves to make the social, not just consume it.

Adopting a spatial perspective on the social layer can help us explore the generative effects of urban agglomerations, economic development, social change as well as social polarization, and, more specifically, the production of justice and injustice. Exploring the cultural, political and economic complexities of modern urban life we discover that more often than not, cities have enabled vast forms of injustice. The challenge that the development of the modern city raises is to understand what it says about social conditions, politics of class, race, gender. How can we create socially and economically just cities in this postmodern world? Taking the socio-spatial dialectic seriously means that we recognize that the geographies in which we live can have negative as well as positive consequences on practically everything we do.

VIGANO, Paola, I Territori dell’ur a isti a, IUAV and Officina, Italy, 2010 SECCHI, Bernardo, Understanding and Planning the Urban Contemporary European City: a new urban question, 2010

1

2

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The progress of most of the cities is and will be greatly affected by planners and urbanists. This involves the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them.

The paper starts by presenting a short theory of the just city from a social anthropological point of view, followed by a section on the philosophy of justice within the context of housing in the democratic societies. The paper concludes with a set of questions on how housing should be approached.

Theories of the just city What is a just city and what does spatial justice mean actually? Justice has been the central question in the conception, design and experiencing the city from ancient times. Pythagora speaks about a community where all are equal, materially and morally around 500 B.C. when he formulated the Quadrivium and taught it under the name Tetraktys at the time. The Quadrivium arises out of the most revered of all subjects available to the human mind - Number - the sum of disciplines that analyze the order of space as Number in Space, Number in Time and Number in Space and Time – Arithmetic, Geometry, Harmony and Astronomy. All these studies offered a safe and reliable ladder to reach the simultaneous values of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. This than lead to the essential harmonious value of Wholeness that was identified with the concept of Just. Later on, around 380 B.C. hoping to discover the ends and nature of justice, Plato creates kallipolis - the ideal city. In his book The Republic, he centres everything on one question: is it always better to be just than unjust?

In the more recent times, in addition to spatial justice, the concept of justice goes beyond social and economic layers: it includes territorial, environmental, racial, community, local, global modifiers. Paris in the 60’s opens new views on the spatial and urban concept of justice, the new concept

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of space and spatiality. The theoretical movement in social anthropology known as structuralism with which Michel Foucault was associated in that period and Henri Lefebvre’s call for control over the right to the city and the right to difference generates the site for the creation of the radically new concept of space.

In 1973, David Harvey speaks about territorial justice. The generic search for a just city, the spatiality of justice and injustice from the local to the global, is due to the changes in thinking about space as an active power that shapes human life.

The three principles that guide the critical spatial thinking today   

we are all spatial as well social and spatial beings, space is socially produced and therefore socially changed, the spatial shapes the social as much as the social shapes the spatial

- recognize that the geographies we live in can have negative as well positive consequences on everything we do’3. The concept of spatial justice and the just city, involves the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them4 , is a city that supports the full development of each individual and of all individuals. Spatial discrimination usually shaped by class, race and gender should not be reduced only to segregation. The distribution of real income in favour of the rich over the poor in our capitalist economy is part of the normal urban system, the urban functioning and the primary source of inequality and injustice.

Uneven geographic development or underdevelopment, social polarization makes the search for universal human rights detached from specific time and

3

MARCUSE, Peter, Spatial Justice: Derivative but Causal of Social Injustice, Columbia University, 2009 4 HARVEY, David, The Right to the City, New Left Review 53, [www.newleftreview.org], 2018

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place5 in an era where time needs to be seen not only as ‘flowing’ but, should be read spatially as well6.

Thinking about what justice in the city might be, we understand that it is philosophers that try to determine what is the meaning of justice. The above short history of how and who ‘promoted’ the concept and consulting different readings of the German philosopher Rainer Forst - the list of writings that he would give his students taking the course of Theories of Justice he used to teach within Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, made it possible to familiarise with the concept. A series of writings that make the base of this attempt to develop an abstract theory of what it means to talk about justice within the context of collective housing in the democratic societies.

The philosophy of justice within the context of housing in democratic societies What we see today is a triumph of what we call neo-liberalism – the term refers to liberalism in the 18th century meaning: free markets, individualism, limits on government, regulations, saying in some sense that every individual is out for him/herself, the triumph of conservative market economics believing in growth above all things.

Trying to understand the complexity and the contradictions of justice in the city, we try to understand principles that are applicable to urban development and design. How do we explain typical outcomes? Principles like equity,

5

Ibid.

ALBRECHTS, Louis and MANDELBAUM, Seymour J, The Network Society_ A New Context for Planning?, Routledge, New York, 2005

6

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democracy, diversity, stand out from a long list but these principles can sometimes conflict; in the effort to obtain diversity and democracy man facts cut against equity. In times of conflict, equity should receive priority7. If we talk about justice a lot, we should constantly ask if the policies we use when it comes to housing (and not only) are just.

Democracy does not always produce equity or diversity, and having diversity and democracy may produce a public that might be more involved and active but may produce great urban inequality8. How are these valid for any type of city? John Rawls famous theory of justice9, instead of doing what earlier philosophers had done: talk about democracy or justice, deducing it from natural law or from theology, from God, refers to ‘the public choice theory’ 10.

He says: if you are a modern economist and you believe in public choice theory, that is you believe in rational, in rational human beings and in what a rational person would do in a particular situation, what will rational people do if they were in what he called ‘the original position’? That is, if they did not know where they would end up in society and he uses the term ‘vale of ignorance’. If people were behind a vale of ignorance, what sort of society would they choose to have? Since is more likely to be at the bottom than at the top if you were in a pyramidal hierarchy, it would be rational for people to decide that they want a society that is more or less, equal. He terms this as the ‘difference principle’11.

The difference principle essentially argued for equality and its emphasis was on material equality, equality of goods. Rawls, has been often criticized for being overly concerned with the material inequality and not being sufficiently concerned with questions like identity of difference. Not in the sense of rich

7

FAINSTEI, Susan, The Just City, Cornell University Press, New York, 2010 MARION YOUNG, Iris and NUSSBAUM, Martha, Responsibility for Justice, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011 9 RAWLS, John, A Theory of Justice, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, USA, 1971 10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

8

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and poor but in the sense of ethnicity, gender, cast, of all the ways in which people are disrespected, are not given recognition, even though they may in fact have material equality.

A number of philosophers have attempted to elaborate on a theory of justice, which included other variables besides money, besides wealth. Amartya Sen developed the ‘capability approach’12 which said that equality means that people should have equal capabilities, that people should have the equal opportunity to make the most of themselves in a number of ways, but he does not specify the ways in which they would have these capabilities. Nussbaum makes a list of capabilities such as health, education, personal freedom and in particular the need and right to housing13.

Within philosophy emphasizes on the term recognition when it comes to housing. Recognition refers to: being treated with respect. What has been the most important current in social thought in the last several decades14 has to do in fact with this issue of diversity, multiculturalism and recognition when planning and designing for housing. We can adopt the notion of all people are more or less alike, but the reality is that people belong to groups, they have group affiliations, people are characterized by difference and that difference should be respected when thinking and designing/proposing different forms of housing, rather than simply wiped out15. Adding to the concept of equity comes the concept of diversity, of respect for diversity but keeping in mind the economy and the economic inequalities16, which remain key in capitalist societies. All these philosophers stress the issue of democracy and determination of people.

12

Ibid.

SEN, Amartya, The Idea of Justice, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, USA, 2011 14 HONNETH, Axel, The Pathologies of I dividual Freedo : Hegel’s So ial Theory, Princeton University Press, Oxford, 2010 15 FAINSTEI, Susan, The Just City, Cornell University Press, New York, 2010 16 MARION YOUNG, Iris and NUSSBAUM, Martha, Responsibility for Justice, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011

13

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When we are talking about democracy within the context of the city is both extremely important as problematic17. The planning literature on democracy and citizenship participation is a response to the days of urban renewal, to the lack of bureaucratic response that was characteristic for this urban renewal, based at some degree on an argument that if you would give community more power, if you have more participation it will lead to a redistribution of resources, hence access to housing for all. What we have seen in the last 20 years is that even though we had a lot more public participation we see lot more inequality rather than equality. The movements from the 1960’ - 70’ described hitherto were rather radical movements that were demanding community power. Now, participation tends to be routinized18 and largely is not about equal redistribution. It tends to be dominated by homeowners, tends to be protecting ones property whatever it is, rather than pressing for redistributing change, rather than pressing for more equity. Citizen participation is desirable, it provides local knowledge and bureaucrats who do not consult with local communities often proceed in ignorance. That greater democracy in itself is a desirable goal19, but democracy is problematic in relationship to equity, moreover is very hard to organize it so that it takes in account city wide concerns, it can frequently be parochial and in many cases it can lead to corruption20. Planning for housing should become increasingly concerned with diversity, both physical - Jane Jacobs argued for a diversity of uses21. Her critique on the emphasis on physical form diversity became quite popular among right wing economist who took her critique to planning and said that we will get a good diverse housing philosophy if we just let the market do its work. The question remains

17

FRASE, Nancy, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Columbia University Press, 2008 18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 HARVEY, David, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso, New York, 2012 21 FAINSTEI, Susan, The Just City, Cornell University Press, New York, 2010 JACOBS, Jane, The Death and Life of American Cities, Modern Library, USA, 1961

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whether the megalomania and opportunism of politicians and planners will accept a new and more humane paradigm that curtails their profits. This is doubtful unless they are pressured by city-wide networks armed with alternative research and an alternative vision. The key to bringing about change lies in the nature of professional education.

Conclusions The concern with diversity in terms of planning and policymaking has merged with the concern of philosophers with what they call recognition. Urban design has a big role in making diversity within the city; you create diversity through a combination of physical actions, planning and providing for low income in projects that you build for different types of housing.

Space is one of the most basic resources of population. As Malthus was saying in his demographic essay22, we should be concerned with positive and preventive checks as to hold population within the limits of the available resources.

The most striking feature of the 20th century is the tremendous population growth with 1,6 billion at the start of the century to 6.2 billion persons in 2000.

The United Nations Population Division estimates that the 9 billion mark will be hit around 2050 and that the world population will stabilize somewhere around 10 billion. One of the very distinctive demographic developments of the 20th century that went along with population growth was the increase of the proportion of persons living in urban areas. In 1900 about 14% of the world population lived in cities, while in 2003, 48% of the world’s population was living in urban areas with an estimation that by 2050, it will increase to

22

MALTHUS, Thomas Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798-1826

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68%23. In the wake of industrialization, urbanization has been more or less a spontaneous process. Modern economic systems need large cities to make optimal use of productive capacity in capital investment and workforce. Cities also tend to concentrate the intellectual skills of a nation as administrative centres in the public and the private sphere, but also as centres of education and of scientific and artistic production. Urbanization is one of the strategies of mankind to cope with the permanent tension between available resources and population growth and helps to make a more rational use of scarce land24.

As such, we ask ourselves: Is the alternative to the existing housing pattern an inclusive one, based on the principles of justice and equality? By what process do you develop a vision for such an alternative and how can it be promoted? Could this alternative be born out of the processes that challenge (successfully and unsuccessfully) projects promoted by the neoliberal urban development paradigm?

Cities around the world are facing common challenges such as the growth of informal settlements, socio-spatial segregation, real estate speculation, as well as the urgent need to put in place sound strategies when it comes to housing regulations and the right to housing in the modern city. Following the just city concept and the equity principle described above, cities should strive for achieving (a non-exhaustive list): 1. urban planning schemes that combine adequate housing and quality neighbourhoods that are both inclusive and sustainable; 2. more power for local authorities to regulate the real estate market; 3. increased funds to improve public housing stock; 4. develop (better) tools to co-produce alternative public-private and community-driven housing solutions; 5. cooperation between municipalities in residential strategies.

23 24

UNITED NATIONS, World Urbanization Prospects, The 2003 Revision, New York, 2004 Ibid.

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Bibliography               

ALBRECHTS, Louis and MANDELBAUM, Seymour J, The Network Society_ A New Context for Planning?, Routledge, New York, 2005 FAINSTEI, Susan, The Just City, Cornell University Press, New York, 2010 FRASE, Nancy, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Columbia University Press, 2008 HARVEY, David, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso, New York, 2012 HARVEY, David, The Right to the City, New Left Review 53, [www.newleftreview.org], 2018 HONNETH, Axel, The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory, Princeton University Press, Oxford, 2010 JACOBS, Jane, The Death and Life of American Cities, Modern Library, USA, 1961 MALTHUS, Thomas Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 17981826 MARCUSE, Peter, Spatial Justice: Derivative but Causal of Social Injustice, Columbia University, 2009 MARION YOUNG, Iris and NUSSBAUM, Martha, Responsibility for Justice, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011 RAWLS, John, A Theory of Justice, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, USA, 1971 SECCHI, Bernardo, Understanding and Planning the Urban Contemporary European City: a new urban question, 2010.

SEN, Amartya, The Idea of Justice, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, USA, 2011 UNITED NATIONS, World Urbanization Prospects, The 2003 Revision, New York, 2004 VIGANO, Paola, I Territori dell’urbanistica, IUAV and Officina, Italy, 2010

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David Alexandru Dumitrescu, Andrei Chindriș

A NEIGHBOURHOOD. A HOME. 20 YEARS

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, a melting pot of dwellings, collective and individually, of green areas, parks and small crop gardens, connected by a series of streets and alleys, having between them a set of complex relationships, sometimes dichotomic.

THE HOME, the space where most of our lifetime is spent, a space of experiences, of intimacy, of memories, a world full of dreams and aspirations, in which we contemplate them. A space subject to transformations that, in turn, influences, sometimes unconsciously, its habitants and altering the attributes of living.

THE HUMAN BEING, a link between the two, giving identity to a place, while also adopting it, thus forming a community.

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Timisoara is constantly developing, construction sites keep on appearing everyday with more and more cranes that stretch high in the sky. The city won its title of Capital of Culture for 2021 so apartments from new residential districts sell like hotcakes. Everyone tries to catch an apartment at a fair price, always searching for a good location in the ongoing chaos settled over the urban area, but still, will they be able to build a strong community as fast as the flats rise? Or do they perceive them as independent houses which only lack the private backyard? On its way, the expanding city often meets other settlements, which are integrated in its urban tissue. The latter begin to gradually lose their rurality, the population changes and mingles, loses certain habits and assimilates new ones, the attributes of dwelling alter and life seems to be trying to adjust itself to the new conditions, in a perpetual interdependence with the space and with the environment. Almost imperceptibly, the area of houses blends in with the area of tenements, resulting in new spatial relations and in new human behaviours. The herd of cows which can be observed on the road in the morning and in the evening decreases each year, becoming merely a memory, among the many others the neighbourhood would have left in some people’s minds. The spaces behind the tenements inevitably adjoin the gardens in which people still cultivate vegetables.

The tendency people have, to associate space and different elements of urban design with necessities, comes from us being part of a utilization cycle, most of the time unaware of it, when talking about how a space should be used and how it’s actually used, starting with a dynamic behaviour stretching in the whole neighbourhood, characteristic to children, from running and climbing all the way to playing „Hide and seek” in all sorts of recesses, passing to teenagers that gather in key points around the neighbourhood for chattering in the evenings, to adults who meet up around small market shops and tenements’ corners to discuss, ending with elders enjoying the sunset on the front alley bench. All this types of interactions with space define us as individuals, giving identity to a place and we also rediscover the diversity of necessities as we pass through life from one stage to another.

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Co-living, and especially the private space of an apartment, has a substantial influence on our behaviour and on our ongoing process of development as individuals. By interacting with the space, living among families, friends and neighbours, we establish relationships with people who share common interests, creating a community. The majority of people end up living in the same district their whole life but the growing number of apartments available for rent begin to interfere in the already existing life pattern. Starting from a macro to micro analysis of a district, we discover many complex relationships that exist between space and its inhabitants, a cluster of social patterns around tenements, making changes in people’s systems of values, without them actually noticing it. These observations extend to the micro scale of the private space found in apartments, where types of human relationships are based on room’s configurations and also organically changing itself in time with its users. There is a huge contrast when it comes to what co-living meant 20 years ago and, at the same time, what meant to be part of a community built around it.

The changes undergone by neighbourhoods are gradually minor and slightly taken into consideration, but, in retrospect, twenty years substantially leave their mark. In the suburbs, the streets are currently asphalted and intensely used, the public street lighting is so effective that almost eliminates the gloom, suggesting security, but diminishing intimacy and disturbing biological rhythms. The spaces in front of the houses are crowded each and every time an event takes place in the nearby park. The residents take care of their green areas, patiently removing the weeds with shears, while cigarette stumps are dropped from the rushing cars, stumps which subsequently lie beside the kerb. At any time during day or night, the mechanical street sweepers can be heard. The people in the neighbourhood walk the streets, walk their pets, quiet or noisy, but no longer meet in well-known places, “for a chat”. Children playing with the ball in the street can be seen increasingly rarer, either due to insecurity, either due to the new activities they are attracted to. Sometimes a rooster still crows after midnight, sometimes a cart passes by. The single constant is the lighting of bonfires during summer and autumn, which seems not to have altered for decades.

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Two old ladies having a conversation, with their heads hanging out of the windows, each from it’s own balcony, a noisy meeting between the flat administrator and residents taking place on the front alley, friends who gather for a drink at the local bar, kids playing on the streets, climbing trees and garages, these are all pictures that use to live amongst the multitude of grey neighbourhood, built in communism. Technology becomes more and more present in our daily routine, together with changes on the socialeconomical plan, being key factors in this process.

New residential projects investments develop a good marketing strategy but, at the same time, the coagulation process of a community suffers from instabilities found in the society. The quality of materials and aesthetics is far superior since communism closed its tenements “factories’’, but then people have also changed, they interact less and less, tenants come and leave and maybe the most noticeable change to remark is to look exactly for what is missing, the noise made by children, which occurred on streets, gardens and parking lots that today only serve as resting places for cars. Is it technology to blame? The fear of parents to leave their children unsupervised outside? The surplus of cars? A new generation with other necessities?

All of us had this type of conversation with the parents regarding the subject of playing outside, you had to respect a set of spatial boundaries set by them: “don’t go pass the last flat”, “don’t cross the avenue”, “don’t leave the area around the back garden or the parking lot”, “you must remain in my sight” would have been sad by a mother overlooking her offsping from the balcony, which also was part of the kitchen. Power utility poles, trees, fences, gas pipes, garages, walls, gardens surrounded by vegetation, stair entrances, parking lots, all this elements were used by children to point out limits, borders, which defined what “neighbourhood” meant to them, regardless of what an urban planner may have had to say. Choosing where to play from all this places was a decision based on emotions, preferring a space protected by trees from passing strangers, or avoiding a street completely because it happens to be the gathering place for bullies, making excess of the imbalance between ages. Space enclosed by tenements becomes a canvas for all social activities, most of the time bringing

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residents on a neutral ground, an alternative to meetings that took place in someone’s apartment.

Garages transformed in small family businesses remain just a faint imagine in the collective memory, having your doors opened for people taking odds and ends, an auto-service, a depiction of what was once an arrow painted on a wall pointing to the only place in the neighbourhood for buying acidified soda or a craftsmen shed for building metal fences. Every district had enough minimarkets where you could buy stuff and also chat with the saleswoman happening to be your neighbour as well. All this small companies lose ground in front of hypermarkets that are coming closer to the city, invading it at one point, leaving behind a melancholically door covered in locks, with windows overlaid by wood boards. By losing this small shops, people rely now on bigger commercial centres, using them also as meeting places and a support for other social activities, streets becoming only part of their daily routine of leaving the neighbourhood.

Some parts of the city still preserve, in front of the houses, those sitting places, sometimes improvised from objects of no avail to the household, identified as “the street bench”. Their condition proves that their role is long gone, that nobody still spends any time there watching and greeting the passers-by or waiting for the animals returning from the pastures. They remain mere traces of a lifestyle that began to fade away with the urbanization. One seldom stops in front of some window to talk to the person who, leaning over the window sill, gazes satisfied at the space before his house. People withdraw increasingly more in the intimacy of the home, allowing just the access of the close ones and distance themselves from the public space. The relations between neighbours suffer because of the life rhythm, which does not even allow to know each other, the interactions between them consisting only of some words cast out by complacency.

The houses’ yards still keep their attribute of transition space, of median area between the street’s turmoil and the interior’s calmness. Here, during summer, the table and the chairs can be brought out, in order to admire the flowers in the garden, the guests can be received and, above all, the kids

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can play at will. But all of these have a price, the loss of contact with the neighbourhood and the lack of its cognition. If until quite recently the gates would remain open throughout the day, and the neighbours would call one another for different problems, they currently remain locked, due to insecurity or due to the fear of abusive interference of acquaintances in the private life.

The influence of the interaction with the space and with the occupants upon the personal behaviour is inversely proportional with the dimension of the setting in which it develops. The apartment becomes a physical alter-ego of the occupant, who passes, in turn, through different phases, through renovations that lead to the transfiguration of the previously acquired habits.

The reconfiguration of the rooms, the loss of contact with the outer space by sealing the balconies, the hierarchization of the spaces, together with other actions that change the function and the aspect of the dwelling, can be discovered in our behaviours, by adjusting to the new space. These changes usually appear in moments of increase or decrease of the family, of the friend group, changes that can lead to the extension of the ego upon the space or its withdrawal, a fact which frequently produces tensions between the members. The slow process of space metamorphosis reaches its end on the moment of our fusion with it, offering it identity. A museum that accommodates memories, displaying the life of the occupants and always prepared for new ones. Even though during his existence it will know multiple owners, all of these will refer, when talking about this place, as “home”, the place that will offer comfort, safety and the necessary intimacy.

An apartment itself passes through different stages, together with its inhabitants. Having a difficult start involving accommodation, psychologically and financially, becoming a space full of life, animated by parties, guests and friends, neighbours who would come in your kitchen for a coffee mug in the morning, gathering around the TV to watch a show or a football match, people with common interests ending up in separated rooms, wives and mothers preparing delicious meals in the kitchen, men having discussions in the living room, teenagers looking for a small, comfortable room which suits their shyness and little kids running

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everywhere, invading all these places and being part of them all, ending up as a merely modest living space for elders. A segregation encouraged by technology shifts all this interactions in virtual space, visits become old fashioned and taking place outside of our private space. Our homes convert more and more into a fortress, face to face communication pales in front of the accessibility the internet offers you.

On the other hand, the specific interior organization of an old house determines specific human behaviours, while the modification of the spatial configuration is always made according to the users’ needs. It is astonishing how, as the family evolves and life’s phases and rhythms succeed, the dwelling rooms lose functions and acquire new ones, merge or divide, extend or isolate in relation to the outer space. And all these changes are eloquent beyond measure regarding the paths of the dwellers’ lives. The two chambers facing the street, formerly used both as bedrooms and living or working rooms, nowadays merge into a wide space for receiving guests, which only in details still keeps the memory of the previous organization.

Here, the beds and wardrobes give place to a vast bookcase, symbol of a new phase of knowledge and understanding. In the past, in order to reach the bathroom, the child used to pass through the parents’ bedroom, through the unheated entrance hall and through the kitchen, which sometimes awoke the olfactory perception. Things have changed, for the garret, turned into a habitable attic, currently accommodates the sleeping area and the study, the most intimate spaces, situated at the end of the home’s route.

From up above, the neighbourhood assumes another dimension, its limits are perceived differently and the need for contemplation can be once again fulfilled. A window open towards the street, besides the terrible noises produced by cars, brings inside other aspects of existence that, despite all endeavour, cannot be ignored: the barking of a stray dog, the yelling children returning from school, sighs, reproaches told over the phone, conversations between the elders regarding who has and who has not attended a funeral. All of these pervade arbitrarily, but trigger reactions and thoughts as diverse as the stimuli that have induced them.

Those who step into one’s home are received in different rooms, depending on the relationship’s degree of familiarity: the relatives and the friends are

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introduced in the living room, where anniversaries are commonly celebrated, while the acquaintances are invited to have a sit in the kitchen.

It is not about preferential treatment, but about the extent of intimacy and comfort related to the other persons. For the strangers, the changes that occur in time become more evident, even though they do not perceive all the behavioural subtleties those changes imply. In this regard, it is obvious that introspection, age and manner of considering one’s own home have a crucial role. The temporary reconfiguration of furniture and the careful placing of the Christmas tree influence the habits and the perceptions. The spot where you would expect to see the armchair is now occupied by the TV console, which, in turn, gave room to the tree. Behind these fortuitous modifications, the cyclic delight of change and reinventing the space resides, in order to strengthen the identity and the dwellers’ sense of belonging.

But the identity and the sense of belonging do not confine only to spatial configurations. They imply both a material dimension and a spiritualpsychological one. People come to identify themselves with the space of the dwelling through objects that represent them, through displaying collections, through the colours of the wall paint or though the finishes.

There is no doubt that these aspects have an influence upon the identity of the space. And it is them the ones which confer the other dimension, the immaterial one, that converts in time into memories, into experienced sensations, into states of mind or into pursuits of happiness. Inside the dwelling place, niches of memory can be identified, which, through their spiritual weight, get to shape characters and determinate behaviours. The scents, the flavours and the other sensations connected to these spots last throughout the years, maintaining their singularity. Along with ageing, the elements of identity might suffer alterations, some are overlooked, while others replace them. Their history and metamorphoses stand testimony to the evolution of the residents and to the changes their lives undergo: the kindling and extinction of some passions, of some habits, the discard of objects that no longer represent them.

The immaterial inheritance of the childhood house is carried by the future adult in each and every dwelling he or she adopts, trying to cast, most often

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unconsciously, its archetypal image upon them. Residing in a house continues long after one ceases to be physically present in it and only ends with his death. To the same extent he holds inside the inheritance of the house, the house, in turn, keeps a part of his identity and many interventions would be needed in order to completely remove it.

Past and present. These two aspects represent the basis upon which we bring forward our questions regarding the place one individual has within the co-living architectural programme and also regarding the impact the built environment has upon his or her behaviour and habits. In most of the cases, architects and urban planners used to and still tend to make compromises concerning the quality of both tenements and public spaces surrounding them. The pressure coming from investors, always trying to achieve profit, also contributes to this situation, prejudicing the dwelling’s system of values. We see all these things as key factors in maintaining a decreased rate in human interactions, both in public and private spaces, interactions that were once dispersed across the neighbourhood. Due to the above mentioned flaws, people bring different changes to the environment, in order to suit their needs. In the last 20 years, we have seen people bringing improvements, welcoming new technologies, altering their habits.

And yet, what does the future hold in store? Twenty years from now, what new necessities will architecture try to fulfil? Will people still be able to bring improvements to the design? Is this kind of action the result of a specific human behaviour, or the aspect of a faulty design process? Will technology overtake physical interactions to the point of isolating people into their homes? Will they have the same kinds of thoughts and memories? All these questions are worthy to be debated upon.

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Dreptul la Oraș

HOUSING, FOR WHOM? Some of the materials included here, both text and figures, were initially published in the magazine Strada, edited by our group1.The testimonies were collected during interviews for the magazine or personal discussions with the cited persons.

Names are not given as several persons have expressed their desire to not have their identity disclosed.

Timi oara is a city with a thriving economy and its booming property market is one of the most active in the country. There are currently around 200 residential complexes in construction citywide2. There is something troubling however, under this facade of prosperity. The cost of a comfortable living in the city is around 400€ per month3. Around half of the population in the county earns less than that amount4. So it is natural to ask, for whom are all these homes being built?

For the factory worker who does backbreaking work, including on most Saturdays and some Sundays, who earns nowhere near the mean national wage? For the starting high school teacher, who often buys some school props out of her own pocket, and has barely enough money left for subsistence expenditures after paying the rent? Even, for the creative contractual middle-class worker, like some artists and architects, who have good but inconstant incomes?

1 http://dreptullaorastimisoara.com/strada_issue_02.html 2 http://www.tion.ro/aproape-200-de-ansambluri-rezidentiale-sunt-acum-in-lucru-in-timisoara/1979950 3 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Timisoara 4 http://storage07transcoder.rcs-rds.ro/storage/2018/07/04/934211_934211_1_Studiu-privind-forta-de-munca2017-principalele-industrii.pdf Table 12, 61-62.

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The answer is given more or less subtly by the developers themselves. City of Mara, for example, is marketing itself as the first ―city inside a city‖ in Timi oara 5 – almost literally the definition of a gated community –, obviously speaking to the sensibilities of an upper middle-class, that has the means and desire to escape the sight of a decaying urban fabric, of the working poor and especially of the homeless. And ISHO, that, with its offer which includes luxury apartments6, is promising to attract the type of capital for which the built environment (especially in high-value near-central locations) represents merely a safety deposit, without any actual intent for usage. A few years from now we should be keeping an eye on how many of these apartments have their lights on at night, as Sasskia Sassen remarks about the phenomenon plaguing most large cities around the globe7.

Neoliberalism and the dismantling of the means of social reproduction

It is one of the defining characteristics of neoliberal capitalism, that it undermines and plunders the basic mechanisms that ensure society‘s (and thus also the economy‘s) continued existence. Social reproduction, as this set of mechanisms is called in Marxist language, includes things formally included in the economy, like the transportation system and after-schools; welfare programs, like child support and the pension system; and a large part of the work (formally un-recognized as such) which goes on in the ‗private sphere‘ of the home, like raising children, doing household chores, engaging in recreational activities and nurturing friendships, regularly captured by the terms domestic and care work; all of which are essential for our socio-economic system to go on, from one minute to the other, from one day to the next, and from one decade to the following.

5 http://www.cityofmara.ro/ 6 http://www.isho.ro/ 7 Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. London: Harvard University Press, 2014.

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Social reproduction includes also ‗social needs‘ like ―[p]articipation in the higher, even cultural satisfactions, the agitation for [one's] own interests, newspaper subscriptions, attending lectures, educating [one's] children, developing [one's] taste etc.,‖8 but at the most basic level it entails covering the existential needs of humans, like food and shelter. Housing, obviously, has an especially central role in sustaining the daily lives of workers and citizens.

T. Bhattacharya argues that in order to correctly understand the functioning of the economy, we must consider besides the circuit of capital production (money → means of production + labor power → production process → new commodities → surplus money), the circuit of the production and reproduction of the labor force (money → consumer items and services → ‗production process‘, i.e. ―eating, drinking, procreating‖ etc. → worker‘s renewed labor power → money), as a tangent and interconnected, as opposed to a separate, sphere9. Only in doing so, do we correctly appreciate the interconnected web of causality that produces and maintains our capitalist reality. How, for example, the same workers that produce commodities also need to buy them in order to ensure their own survival, and how capital needs workers to be able to buy the commodities, or else they will not be able to rejuvenate their labor power and hence not be able to produce more commodities. Neoliberal capitalism exactly obscures the interrelation between these two spheres. It does this first of all by propagating a discourse according to which ‗the best of all worlds‘ is achieved by privatizing and financializing the whole Universe, while persistently rolling back the state, and all of it sprinkled with a superficial narrative of meritocracy. The effect of this discourse is the downplaying of the social importance of jobs like tram drivers, nurses and sanitation workers – which leads to suppression of wages –, and the externalization (as much as possible) of socially reproductive tasks, from the society to individuals and communities (acts like cutting funding for day care programs and reducing the number of public transportation lines).

8 Karl Marx, Grundrisse, quoted in 9.

9 Tithi Bhattacharya, How Not To Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class, in: Tithi Bhattacharya (Ed.). Social reproduction theory: Remapping class, recentering oppression, 2017, 80.

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Consider, for example, the lives of two people, A. and C, who live in a small brick shack on the river bank, in a marginal area of the city. One of their sources of income is recycling, refurbishing and selling items that other people have thrown away. A. is regularly employed as a day laborer in construction or in household work like chopping wood. Neighborhood teenagers often mock and disturb them, especially during the night, and people often call the police – who obligingly comply – to try to evict them or give them fines, for no legitimate reason. Even though they work without a contract, and thus do not pay taxes or have any medical or other insurance, their labor contributes as much as any other persons‘ to erecting buildings and keeping society in motion. In the summer season, for example, A. often gathers worms and insects to sell to fishing store. Even though this might seem work of not tremendous value, for the citizen who after a long day‘s work wishes to engage in recreational fishing, the availability of buyable fish bait is essential. Despite this fact, the same person might be the one who calls on the police to ‗get rid of‘ A. and C. because they disturb the built and/or natural landscape around his favorite fishing spot.

This obfuscation of the causal link within these continuing cycles of → buying → working → (re)producing → selling → buying →…, is what neoliberalism does so well. This is exactly what permits responsibilities and risks involved in social reproduction to be increasingly privatized, while capital siphons up the liberated values and profits. The fact that the fish bait magically appears in the store, and you can just buy it unconditionally, without consideration for the person whose work is embodied in it, and with whom you co-participate in society, – i.e. the fact that objective social relations between people (in society) appear as subjective material relations between objects (on the market) – is what Marx calls commodity fetishism.

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Social Housing and its Discontents

Social Housing Today Traditionally the way to ensure adequate housing for all throughout much of Europe has been through different types of social housing. Historically social housing became widespread after WWII, as European governments recognised that the only way to avoid the rise of extremist political ideologies (communism, fascism and nazism) was to address the socio-economic disparities that generated the conditions for them to appear (conditions not very unsimilar to what we are experiencing today and which are fueling far-right sentiment around the globe).

The right to housing was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a fundamental right10, the insurance of which is deemed essential for a decent – even a minimal – standard of living.

Housing stopped being viewed through the lens of the ‗social question‘, the shortage of which was understood as a systemic product of free market capitalism, and is now seen instead as an issue of aid for those who are too weak or lazy to cope on their own.

Starting with the 1980s with the spread of the neoliberal ideology (and M.Thatcher‘s flagship right to buy policy) around the world housing became increasingly privatized and financialized. Some countries, like Austria and the Netherlands, still retain considerable amounts of social housing (around 20-30% of the total housing stock11) and there is no stigma associated with publicly assisted living. Throughout much of the world, however, social housing has become synonymous with crime and degradation, a place where only the most wretched of the earth live.

10 Art. 25.(1) of the UDHR. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ 11 http://www.housingeurope.eu/section-14/research?topic=&type=country-profile&order=da

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The way the current local administration of Timi oara feels about social housing has been plainly expressed by the mayor. On site, a few years ago, at the opening of a recently acquired social apartment bloc, mayor Robu said: ―The issue of social housing has been solved only in a very small measure. But I have said to people now, as I always say this: the problem of housing has to be solved by each himself. We cannot become an assistential city. The city hall does not solve the housing problem for thousands and thousands of citizens. At least in Timi oara there is no such orientation.‖12

In accord with this discourse, the town hall persistently failed to keep its part of the housing contract (or does so with great delay), i.e. the external maintenance of its social building stock. In a social apartment complex on Polonă street, for example, the walls of some of the homes are crumbling from mold; the pest control process has been several years late now; and the past years‘ mega-storm has ripped off parts of the roofs of several buildings, so now it practically pours inside when it rains in the affected apartments.

Residential Alienation Moving beyond the poor conditions of the physical spaces and materials, D. Madden and P. Marcuse argue that ―[i]f we truly want to understand the consequences of the hyper-commodification of housing, we need to understand the alienated psychosocial experience – the fear, stress, anxiety, and disempowerment – that the current housing system produces‖13, a state which the authors call ‗residential alienation‘. In modern understanding, alienation means not only ―powerlessness and lack of freedom but also [...] a characteristic impoverishment of the relation to self and the world.‖14

12 http://www.tion.ro/primaria-timisoara-a-impartit-inca-100-de-locuinte-sociale-in-zona-polona/1443569 13 Peter Marcuse and David Madden, In defense of housing: The politics of crisis. London: Verso Books, 2016, 56.

14 Ibid 58.

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Furthermore, in social housing in particular, the ―feeling of alienation is intensified by the social stigma that outside observers apply to housing that differs from the imagined middle-class suburban ideal. ―[T]he disgrace that comes from living in stigmatized locations and housing types is a form of symbolic class violence, adding a layer of socially generated shame to living conditions that may already be precarious.‖15

Mr. lives with his wife and five children in a small one-room social apartment on Polonă street. He works in sanitation and talks with pride about his job – ―without us the city would come to a halt‖ –, but also with an undercurrent of induced shame – ―they tell us that we are digging in trash cans, but if we wouldn‘t work they would be neck deep in garbage in two days‖. Both he and his wife are visibly affected by the fact that after decades of work at a job that they feel has great social importance, they had to wait 15 years to be granted a social home, and even that, as they found out, was extremely small, damaged and, on top of all, located on the ‗periphery of the periphery‘ of the city, as another resident remarks.

Spatial injustice As E. Soja comments, we must be ―insistently aware how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how human geographies become filled with politics of ideology.‖16

15 Ibid 73.

16 Edward W Soja, Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso Books, 1989, 6.

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The ‗periphery of the periphery‘ is a syntagm that captures truly well the spatial position of the social apartment complex on Polonă street – almost a ‗ghetto‘ we might say – (barely) within the city. This spatiality is not a product of accident, but rather of deliberate political decisions. Hidden behind the superficially objective process of the assessment of an application for a social home, there are subjective judgments being made about the importance and deservedness of people to be placed in this or that house. ―There are other social houses in Timi oara, closer to the city center‖, as another resident observes, ―but those ones are only for teachers and other more important people.‖ Even within the complex on Polonă itself, there are larger and smaller apartments, and there is a social stratification which is being induced by subjective appraisals (beyond the ‗objective‘ criteria) of people‘s worth or merit.

The spatial distribution of goods and services is also heavily marked by ideology and judgments of importance. M., another resident, who has a daughter who is confined to a wheelchair, complains that there are no amenities for disabled persons at all in the area. ―It is very hard for me to move around with my girl because of the state of the pavement, which is cracked and broken everywhere, and there are lots of stairs without ramps. We were the other day on a brief visit at relatives in Italy, and she was so happy that she did not want to come home, because it was so easy to move around there.‖ V., who has six children, several with different types and degrees of disabilities, says that there is no stop light at the street crossing, even though it is a heavily circulated road and the number of children in the area outweighs that of the adults. There is no stop light even at the school where her kids go, which is two bus stops away, in a neighborhood in the city. There is also currently no pharmacy in the area. When they have an emergency, they either have to take the car (if they have one) or wait for half an hour after the bus. N. says that she has to wake up at 6AM each morning in order to get prepared for school and catch the only appropriate bus for her. If she misses it, she has to wait another half an hour for the next one and be late for class.

The effect of these unjust spatial configurations is to create new forms of marginalization and alienation, and deepen existing inequalities.17 17 Edward W Soja, Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis: Univeristy of Minnesota Press, 2010.

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Proximity does not a community create We need also to move beyond a narrow understanding of the right to housing as the right to a physical space – a place with four walls and a roof –, towards what would more accurately be called the right to a home and a right to a community.

More explicitly this entails ensuring an adequate background and social infrastructure such that relationships and solidarity networks between neighbors can form. Just putting people in proximity to each other does not guarantee in any way the possibility of forming meaningful relationships. Cramming as many people into a small a space as possible, also obviously does not help. Another important issue is related to the varying needs, wants and desires (NWD) of tenants. While diversity is obviously desirable in a community, and some level of conflict is unavoidable – if not even desirable – putting together people with differing unfulfilled or unfulfillable NWDs can also be a source of problems.

I. is a person living in the social apartment block on Polonă street. He has a quite a serious visual impairment and also a mild intellectual disability. For this, the state offers him a sum of money, from which he must both survive and pay an attendant.

He says that due to his poor vision, he has trouble keeping his apartment in order and even mundane activities can be problematic. ―[I]‘ve cried in my house because sometimes I‘m afraid to even light the stove, I‘m afraid to do anything‖, I. says. His neighbors are very unhappy with this situation, because it generates conditions for bed bugs, for example, they say, with which they are having difficulty dealing. On the other hand, whenever he calls for an attendant to help him, he is reported for bringing foreign people into the block (even when it is his sister). This creates a catch-22 situation in which he is constantly at odds with his close neighbours.

On the other hand, A. and C., have an excellent relation with their close neighbors, offering mutual aid to each other in times of need. Also, their dwelling, although barely a house, is truly a home. They have constantly improved it through the many years they have lived there, from once a ruin it is now a livable shack and they feel that it is their own. They say they would not exchange it for any other dwelling which does not offer significantly better conditions.

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Thus, we see that the problem of whether a house forms the basis for a home or for the formation of a community, is conditioned, but not determined, by the actual physical conditions of the dwelling or the proximity to other residents.

Other political shenanigans One last thing worth noteing, is that the scarcity of social housing makes it a good political bargaining chip and also a tool for disciplining and silencing residents.

Around election period the most urgent – and mediatizable – cases suddenly receive social homes, ensuring votes on one side and raising hopes on the other.

Away from politically volatile periods however, people are told to shut up and accept their conditions because there are no other houses to give. When I. asked to be relocated due to his constant conflicts with his neighbours, he was told ―we gave you [a place] here, you will stay here, for if not, you will not get any other home.‖

Social Housing and its Discontents

There are three goals that we wished to pursue through this short essay.

The first is to argue – hopefully convincingly – that housing, in all its aspects, is a political issue. Even when it seems that the discourse is neutral and objective, there are always – explicit or implicit – judgments that are being made about whose rights matter, who represents a worthy citizen and who is recognized as a legitimate subject of need.

The second is to show that if you live in social housing in Timi oara, you are basically voiceless and invisible.

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And the third is to touch on the role of the architect ‗in all this madness‘18. In the book Spaces of Hope, David Harvey says about the figure of the architect that she ―has a certain centrality and positionality in all discussions of the processes of constructing and organizing spaces. The architect has been most deeply enmeshed throughout history in the production and pursuit of utopian ideals (particularly though not solely those of spatial form). The architect shapes spaces so as to give them social utility as well as human and aesthetic/symbolic meanings. The architect shapes and preserves longterm social memories and strives to give material form to the longings and desires of individuals and collectivities. The architect struggles to open spaces for new possibilities, for future forms of social life. For all of those reasons […] the ‗will to architecture‘ understood as ‗the will to create‘ is the ‗foundation of Western thought‘.‖19

Furthermore, what distinguishes architects from other builders from the animal kingdom is that: ―A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects in reality. At the end of the labor process we get a result that existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only affects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose…‖20

D. Harvey calls on all of us to ―adopt the figure of the architect as a metaphor for our own agency as we go about our daily practices and through them effectively preserve, construct, and re-construct our life-world.‖ Through this short intervention we would also like to call on (professional) architects, who are in an especially good position to assume the figure of the architect – in the sense described by Harvey –, to choose that purpose and apply that will to where it is most needed.

That is, to use their privileged social position to shine a light on the wants, needs and desires of the invisible and to create platforms for empowering the voiceless.

18 https://youtu.be/mKl5_OxKBn8?t=105 19 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000, 200.

20 Karl Marx, Capital volume 1, quoted in [19].

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ANDRA RAISA PARPALA

WHAT IF THEY WERE ​|​ RECONSIDERING (SOCIAL) HOUSING IN BUCHAREST.

Why would not an ensemble of social houses work in a central area of ​Bucharest?

In terms of living, there cannot be a more important and present problem than that of social housing. My intention of studying the social housing program emerges from the desire to understand the socio-economic mechanisms underlying the implementation of this program and the role the city can play in solving the problems that the necessity of social housing raises. If ​social housing​ is an institution where ​we place those individuals whose behavior is "outside the norm" based solely on a precarious economic situation, a heterotopia of deviation, the problem seems to be more deeply rooted in the collective subconscious.

In what context do we ask ourselves about social housing and would it not be more honest to consider housing as a social one in general?

In order to better understand the current situation of social housing in Romania and to anchor this study in real life through empirical data, I will provide interviews with residents of the social housing district of Bucharest, "Odai".

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Bucharest. Facts and phenomena. abstract This first chapter aims to evaluate the urban and social characteristics of Bucharest, by making a short incursion in the social history of the city and analyzing elements related to urban morphology and syntax. In order to better understand the size of the challenges that the city may impose on the diploma project ​Reconsidering (social) housing in Bucharest​, the analysis starts from a general framework, a macro perspective of the ​city​, then focusing on a meso plan of ​the central areas​ of the city and reaching at a micro-scale of the ​neighborhood​, through the community filter.

Bucharest hosts two major phenomena related to alert urbanization, (1)​gentrification​ and (2)​ghettoisation​, processes of interiorization of the communities living in the central areas of the city and peripheral areas, respectively. Without any apparent connection, the two phenomena brought into question highlight the deepening of the social cleavage that the economy of the past 25 years creates through class inequalities and poverty, features physically manifested by the current state of the habitat.

We will therefore analyze how a certain type of living can help us understand the importance of the habitat (neighborhood) in the life of a community, and how the need for belonging to a community can influence the whole dynamic of an urban mechanism. social diversity the development of the city. ​The city is not just the architecture of the buildings it hosts, it also resides in all the types of relationships that settle between places and inhabitants, the connections that people make between different places in the city, regardless of the distance, and which places set between inhabitants of different neighborhoods.

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A social, cultural and neighborhood mapping is needed to see the dynamics of the city and the magnitude of the effects of the two urban phenomena we mentioned above. social diversity. the footprint of history on the inhabitants of Bucharest. ​The city is the result of overlapping feudal, modern, communist and capitalist intentions and interventions. In the collective sense, the city center coincides with the historical center that overlaps with the old Court of Commerce of the Princely Court. The inhabitants of these areas have constantly changed and have adapted to the new rules and patterns of housing the private and public spaces - from the feudal society to the reorganization of the social structure on liberal criteria at the beginning of the 20th century1, to social equalization based on positive segregation in communism through ​social mobility​. ​How are the central areas of the city today? Who lives in the peripheries? urban phenomena gentrification. the social dimension.​ Gentrification​, a highly visible process of neighborhood modernization and tissue regeneration, also involves moving a lower category of inhabitants outside the central areas of the city and replacing them with a younger and more economically advantageous category. Chelcea, Popescu, Cristea2 support the idea of ​the existence of several types of gentrification actors, from state tenants, former owners, external actors, political capitalists to institutional investors. In the case of Bucharest, there is a close link between property ownership and gentrification: the post-socialist transformation of property rights on housing - their privatization, the retrocessions inevitably followed by massive evictions and subsequent commodification.

1

​the period of social and ethnic diversity - landlords, administrative oligarchy, self-employed in the city center, craftsmen and workers in peripheral areas - ​"​Under the ethnic representation, at the 1899 census, Bucharest had a cosmopolitan character, inhabiting 186,623 Romanians, 43,318 overseas, 38,660 Austro-Hungarians, 3,698 Albanians, 2,968 Germans, 2,107 Italians, 1,358 Greeks, 938 Bulgarians, 732 Ottomans, 350 Swiss, etc., but also 6 Chinese and 2 Americans. " ​- Interview with Bogdan Suditu, 2016.

2 C ​ HELCEA, L., POPESCU, R., CRISTEA, D. (2015): Who Are the Gentriers and How Do They Change Central City Neighbourhoods? Privatization, Commodication, and Gentrication in Bucharest. Geograe, 120, No. 2, p.

113–133.

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ghettoization. a look at the periphery. ​In terms of the affected communities, Pulay3 uses two concepts (1) "repair and maintenance citizenship" and (2) "incomplete citizenship". The first refers to the inhabitants that are directly affected by the waves of retrocessions and evictions (interventions on the city's infrastructure), the second concerns the ghetto​ communities, where stigma and resistance to change are the basic characteristics of inter-human connections. Not specific to the central areas of the city, ghettoisation generally occupies the unpleasing space of the outskirts, where access to the city infrastructure is difficult or inexistent, and territorial stigmatization is closely pursued by social stigmatization.4 two perspectives problems. the two perspectives (1) social housing, (2) the city. ​In Bucharest, we are talking today about the wounds of the urban tissue and about the inhabitants’ alienation and their loss of the public space. At the same time, we are witnessing a contemporary attitude of patrimony neglect and urbanistic interventions that seem to continue the wave of last century’s massive demolitions (for example the Berzei-Buzeşti artery). The trend of expansion and development of the city is expressed through gentrification and ghettoisation, urban phenomena in the process of materialization, having as territorial support the central areas, respectively the peripheral areas of the city. results.​ The city, as a body, begins to be dysfunctional; the periphery is no longer fed, the city turns its back on it, therefore it remains totally disconnected from the city life. From a formal point of view, the attention is not directed to central areas, but to the expansion of Bucharest, so gentrification​ acts spontaneously, becomes uncontrolled, which leads to inappropriate juxtapositions concerning scale, style and function. This becomes an out of control situation for the inhabitants of Bucharest, who ​Gergo Pulay, Networked infrastructures and the “local”: Flows and connectivity in a postsocialist city, City 19(2-3): p. 344-355 4 Historically, marginalized social categories of Bucharest are associated with Sector 5, Ferentari neighborhood “bedroom” area with poor local infrastructure associated with high crime - Cătălin Berescu – Ghetoul și zona de locuire defavorizată (ZLD) Aleea Livezilor, în BOTONOGU, Florin (coord.) – Comunități ascunse Ferentari, ed.

Expert, București, 2011, p. 39.

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have difficulties in managing urban perspectives or the scale that is no longer directly addressed to them.

In an attempt to find responses to the formal and social issues raised by these urban phenomena, I propose a scenario based on the theory of​ social mixity​, analyzing the costs and benefits of its implementation in the studied site, from two converging perspectives (1)the neighborhood, a perspective of morphology and syntax and (2) the inhabitant / the community, the social perspective.

Social housing as a tool. abstract At the basis of urban development there is a key concept, ​social sustainability5. This implies the existence of an environment favorable to a harmonious development of local society through social diversity - the coexistence of different social groups, social integration and the improvement of living conditions for all groups of citizens. The consequences of this process of social sustainable development would reduce both segregation and social exclusion, as well as social inequalities.

Through the scenario I propose,​ social mix​, ​social housing​ plays a crucial role. It is not only a tool for maintaining social diversity that is a primary feature of the central areas of Bucharest, but also an instrument for the formal revitalization of the tissue. The dwelling intervenes in the city's syntax problems (broken neighborhood connections, inappropriate functions for community dynamics) and morphology, preserving the character of the studied area (from problems related to the height of the 5 ​ yörgy Enyedi and Zoltán Kovács (eds) Social Changes and Social Sustainability in Historical Urban G Centres.The Case of Central Europe. Discussion Papers Special. Pécs: Centre for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2006.

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cornice imposed by the existing regulations, to tissue reintegration - the specific occupation of the plots).

Inclusion versus exclusion neighborhood - community - the precarious dwelling. ​In Park’s acception6, the concept of ​community​ is closely linked to the site, with local communities being defined as "natural areas" that are the result of competition between real estate and population groups struggling for home accessibility. Thus, the ​neighborhood​ can be defined as a collection of inhabitants and institutions occupying a clearly defined spatial area, influenced by ecological, cultural, economic and political factors - and subordinated to an extended community.

Finding the physical boundaries of a neighborhood, especially in the defragmented neighborhoods of Bucharest, is a difficult task in terms of social processes. Limits can be more easily understood by observing neighborhood interactions, spatial constraints that create ​patterns ​of everyday activities, defining community through behavior, and by the way individuals relate to dwelling.

What happens when the habitat becomes an insecure place and dwelling is precarious? the terms of "​precariat​"​ ​and​ ​"​precarious dwelling​". ​With regard to social inequalities that are increasingly prevalent within cities, in an uncertain economic climate, the term ​precarious​ speaks about the uncertainties and risks of a developing social class7 - without any prospect of a decent job or a reasonable standard of living. We can, therefore, direct the discussion to a ​precarity of habitat​ specific to disadvantaged communities. Situations that show housing precariousness include conditions that describe the poor

6

​Park R.1916.Suggestions for the investigations of human behavior in the urban environment. Am. J. Sociol.

20(5):577–61 ​ pp. 147–154 7 ​Guy Standing (May 24, 2011). "The Precariat – The new dangerous class" http://www.policy-network.net/pno_detail.aspx?ID=4004&title=+The+Precariat+–+The+new+dangerous+class

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physical structure of buildings and / or the dysfunctional relationship between the family and the space they live in - an uncertainty of living. social inclusion. what is missing from the approach of ​social housing in Bucharest?​ In Bucharest, the social housing policy is not adapted to the real needs of citizens. The ratio between the number of social housing and the number of requesting families is extremely disproportionate, and the lack of transparency of housing allocation processes and the legislative blurring between state institutions become a network of uncertainties.

The social housing districts in the Romanian space use ​space exclusion​ as a tool for community control and at the same time as a way of quickly solving problems, without taking into account the effects that can occur in the long run. A route becomes intuitive: ​spatial exclusion - social exclusion / marginalization - ghettoisation​. The examples are many, from Henri Coanda's social housing8, the Micro 17 neighborhood of Galati, the Pata Rat situation9to the Odai neighborhood10. social mix assumption. social mix - a possible solution? ​Can we assume that a diversity of habitat will create a ​social mix​, and social diversity will certainly lead to the creation of ​socio-economic opportunities​ for disadvantaged individuals?11 Starting from the problems that a homogeneous tissue can raise for the economic and cultural development, Andersson's question has drawn my attention not only from the social perspective of his approach but also from the benefits that this approach can bring for this type of environment.

a neighborhood of social housing built near the city of Constanta, a container-built neighborhood where the high degree of crime and poor housing conditions turned it into a ghetto 9 the Roma evicted from Cluj now living near the rubbish pit 10 case studied in Chapter 3 of the paper, ​Case studies​, study supported by interviews with three families living in the Odai neighborhood, a neighborhood without a real physical connection with Bucharest, outside the trolley line 304 11 ​ usterd, Sako, Andersson, Roger, „Housing Mix, Social Mix and Social Opportunities” in URBAN AFFAIRS M 8

REVIEW, Vol. 40, No. 6, July 2005,p. 1-30

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theory. ​Fighting discrimination and segregation by introducing the term social mix12 ​in laws concerning housing and urbanization issues, is shaped by associating it with housing for the disadvantaged (Besson Law, 1990), or with social housing projects (the Law on Solidarity and Urban Regeneration, 2000). Social mix is both a condition - the cohabitation of different social groups on the same territory - and a process - to facilitate this cohabitation, in order to achieve a balanced distribution of the population in the territory13.

The social mix​ applied on the built environment relies on its ability to impart an improvement in the quality of life of disadvantaged communities and an increase in social mobility. The theory is simple. The mix of habitat expressed by assemblies comprising social housing, public dwellings and private dwellings will create a socially and economically mixed community.

This can also bring social opportunities to disadvantaged people, which, in other conditions of segregation-based urban configuration, are nonexistent.

Through ​social opportunities,​ we understand the social, economic and spatial mobility that makes it easier for residents of a neighborhood to access public institutions, decent jobs, and education. would a change in social dynamics not be beneficial to the city? ​and the complexity of the social housing problem and the improbable plumbing of the defragmented urban tissue do not require a simple answer, the same answer? the Romanian case​. ​At a local level, the social mix specific to Bucharest's center is rather spontaneous and appears as a result of the inefficiency of public policies and the lack of architectural programs that could exploit such a type of relationship generated by a heterogeneous social system. The architecture of buildings betrays the type of dwelling and the economic status of occupants and seems to be the one that sustains this cleavage.

Hence the tendency to "clean" the "good" neighborhoods of the city by 12

8)

​The concept is introduced by the law against social exclusion in 1998 in France (Gerbeau, 2015:

definition of the concept by AITEC specialists techniciens, experts et chercheurs) aitec.reseau-ipam.org

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segregating groups of people who are not economically and socially fit for the dynamics of the city center.

What is the case of social dwellings? They are located outside the “bedroom” neighbourhoods, outside the city skirts, a space with no clear boundaries, slightly tangent to the city, but distinctly separated by its lack of connections, an annex to which the city turns its back. The best example is the Odai neighborhood14. The clear, intransigent gesture of building the neighborhood outside the city does not encourage the formation of connections with the latter, and the residents of the neighborhood no longer belong to the Bucharest society. benefits and costs of implementing social housing programs in the city center fear of urban ghettoisation. ​Inevitably, a question arises: are ​we likely to bring the ghetto into the city center by proposing a social housing project located within walking distance of Victory Square?​ I propose to focus our attention on the beneficial effects a social housing project can bring to a central neighborhood and vice versa.

According to a study on the effects of neighborhoods on a community15, the problem of relocating disadvantaged families addressed from the perspective of behavioral and health-related consequences suggests that in homogeneous social groups phenomena leading to economic variations of neighborhoods are rather related to delinquency, depression, risk behaviors, especially among young people. Neighborhood influences the type of social connections, social control, mutual trust, institutional resources and routine of everyday activities. The influence of the "social" model of the "educated", the "wealthy" and the more likely to be accepted on the labor market is also important.

14 15

district studied in Chapter 3 ​Case Studies

Robert J. Sampson,1 Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Thomas Gannon-Rowley, ASSESSING “NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS”: Social Processes and New Directions in Research , Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2002. 28:p. 443–478

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The city would not suffer from this experiment, since ghettoisation is rather a consequence of poverty, not of exclusion. The culture of the poverty model implies that individuals from low-income communities show a low performance that they will retain, while the geography of the favorable model supports the idea of ​improving this performance in the case of increased opportunities16. Thus, residential mobility can provide a chance to improve the city's social and economic dynamics. the social context of Bucharest​. In the case of the studied area for the "Reconsidering (social) housing in Bucharest" project, the framework is a defragmented one. Even if we are analysing a central neighborhood, both the morphology and the architectural programs, along with the functions they house, talk about social diversity and a mix of dwelling. Given the presence of the UNARTE campus and the student hostels of ASE, we can identify an important student community. These are surrounded by collective and individual dwellings in good and working order. When relating to derelict buildings,17 we can identify two other categories of residents, those with very low income or no income, but who risk losing their homes and homeless people or ​squatters 18. Social diversity is already present in the central area of ​Bucharest, the problems are related rather to the lack of ownership of this diversity. perspectives converge.​ Location is the key point in the development of social architecture and represents a first step in rethinking the program. By asking the question ​of social housing​, access to city infrastructure and the primordial need for community membership, the answer does not indicate the outskirts of the cities.

16

​JAMES E. ROSENBAUM, LISA REYNOLDS & STEFANIE DELUCA How Do Places Matter? The Geography of Opportunity, Self-ef​cacy and a Look Inside the Black Box of Residential Mobility, Housing Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2002, p. 71–82 17 According to the mapping of unused spaces in Bucharest, a study conducted by the CALUP platform, the studied area is located in the most dense ​cluster ​of unused spaces in Bucharest. Some of the dwellings in the immediate vicinity of the sites proposed for the diploma project are abandoned, have lost their jobs, many of which are now occupied without legal forms and in poor living conditions. Others are still in process of restitution, which will be followed by evictions; CALUP, http://beta.calup.ro/ro/explore 18 squatter = a person who lives in a empty building without permission, ​Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus​ © Cambridge University Press

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Case study.

The third chapter will focus on the local situation of the social housing by analyzing how urban phenomena and city development influence the social housing policy. The Bucharest case is a less discussed situation so far, the information required for the case study being extracted from interviews we have conducted with three families living in the Odai social housing district of Sector 1. It is very difficult to draw a conclusion on the possibility of ghettoization of Odai19. We can only see that the difficulties that have been presented to us are common, to some extent, to the whole neighborhood social and spatial exclusion, housing insecurity and difficult access to infrastructure. methodology. ​Given that social housing is a sensitive issue for both the state institutions facing this problem and the disadvantaged families who have applied for a social housing, finding a person to act as a gatekeeper and be familiar with Odai was preferable. However, Odai being a relatively new neighborhood, finding such a person turned out to be difficult. Also, noteworthy is the lack of empirical research regarding the Odai community, the only documents that provide us with quantitative information are the decisions of the Sector 1 City Hall in Bucharest regarding the allocation of social housing and the architectural project approvals.20 The present research is a qualitative one and was conducted through direct discussions The Odai District is a district relatively new, built in 2012, the dwellings being put into use with 3-4 years.

20 ​The social housing project in Soseaua Odăi, number 3-5, is part of a large social housing program called "The Decade of Housing". As presented by the City Hall of Sector 1 Bucharest, it is a solution to the housing problems of the persons evacuated after the restitution of the nationalized houses, but also of the economically disadvantaged people, who do not have a dwelling. To build this neighborhood, an investment was needed from local budget funds. There are, therefore, nine blocks with 414 apartments benefiting persons included in the above mentioned categories, a 440sqm kindergarten, a park and commercial spaces of 1650sqm, the project being completed by the end of 2013. The legal provisions to enter possession of a social housing are regulated according to GO no.

19/1994, the dwellings being awarded after a score according to the criteria fulfilled. However, housing distribution processes are non-transparent, legislation becomes blurred by overlapping competencies and competencies between state institutions.

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with families in their own homes based on semi-structured interviews21.

Families we've approached have been randomly selected and will remain anonymous.

Field diary.

March 30, 2017.​ P. now lives with his wife and three of his children in a two-room apartment on the 1st floor. They received their apartment in December 2013 after having waited 15 years for the allocation. They had been evicted from a house near Cismigiu following the retrocession. P. tells me that he liked to have a courtyard, and now living in the apartment building seems tedious.

P .:​ ​"So with five children, they gave us two rooms, seven people, two rooms (...) sleeping cramped, but we have to do with what we have. To have a roof over your head, as they say" P. did construction work for a long time, but because of his asthma he cannot work anymore, the construction site moved at home. He keeps on investing in the apartment to ​"bring it to reality"​. In the living room we sit around the table, me and my colleague, P., his wife, a neighbor and their two young girls. They are 7 and 9 and go to a weekly boarding school in Dămăroaia, but they have been staying home for a few days, they got sick because of the mold in the house. The elder son is not at home, he's 16, and he's left school. P. hopes to find him a job.

P .:​ ​"I even painted the walls and more mold appeared. So I do not know what to do next. I was going to put tiles everywhere, in all rooms (...) I still have a problem, I'm telling you that there are bedbugs. I don’t know where they appear from. I tried all kind of chemicals but nothing works.”

​Field visits and interviews were carried out with the help of Arina Iacob, PhD student at SNSPA Bucharest.

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The photos were taken with the consent of Mr. P.

The neighborhood does not seem to favor the existence of a community, even if the shortcomings and problems are common. The lack of common spaces and the precarious interactions are the basis of the relationship between neighbors. I also learned from them that the kindergarten and the commercial building are not functional. The closest store is in a gas station, a 15-minute walk away, the ambulances take 5 hours to make a call, and the bus needs at least an hour and a half to reach the center, and that, when it makes the stop.

P .:​ ​"When I first saw it, I really enjoyed it. When you first come to a new house everything is ok but when you figure out what it is like.."

On the ground floor of the same building, I met D and her daughter. Three generations live in the dark 3-room apartment, D., her daughter and her two grandchildren, her son and his wife, a total of 6 people. They do not have any more furniture in the house, they sleep on mattresses or blankets, the furniture they threw away because of mold and bedbugs. D. is a widow, she has raised her two children alone and was very happy about the allocation.

When she saw herself at the edge of the city, she wanted to leave. daughter:​ ​"The children were infected from the bedbugs" D:​" They told me not to give up this apartment because I won’t be getting another one(...)the doors fell on us..what we have suffered. They told me i

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was not allowed to change anything, because i was not the owner. And when will I become? "

The photos were taken with the consent of Mrs. D.

They moved from Ciocanesti of Dambovita in Bucharest to Matache Square in her aunt’s house for the girl's surgeries. The mother is working as a street sweeper. Now she faces 4-week notice. She's afraid she will not find a job anymore.

D:​ "All winter I lived with rags down (at the door) not to freeze (...) What to do first? To buy a door or to eat? (...) I've been working for 20 years. Here we used ro throw the garbage " "I did not like the area, ​I felt like a stranger​. I say, lady, what am i supposed to do here in the field? I say, what have they built here where we used to bring the garbage? I recognized the place. And I did not like this building, the last one, here, why is my name here, exactly on this door?"​(D., interviewed March 30, 2017)

COMPETITION.BETA 2018 | CATEGORY 6 — ARCHITECTURE TEXT | PAGE 15

Conclusions or instead of​.

In search for a common answer both for the morphology and syntax problems of Bucharest and for the problems that the social dwelling raises in the Romanian space has led to finding a possible solution through the theory of social mix and the mix of habitat. The paper proposes a possible scenario and aims to analyze it from two converging perspectives, the city perspective and the perspective of society.

The current situation of social housing in Romania is problematic by the stigma accompanying the concept. We can conclude, following the presentation of the Odai neighbourhood, that the social housing does not occupy a privileged position either within the city or within the society.

Social housing​ is therefore not only an end in itself, but also an instrument for the formal revitalization of tissue in the central areas of the city, formally intervening in redefining the morphology of the habitat (by form, scale, land occupation), restoring broken connections. It becomes an instrument for maintaining the social diversity specific to Bucharest, an instrument of social mix.

What if they were​ ​it is not a question, but rather an invitation, a removal from the comfort zone. Let us imagine that we can do better.

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