The analysis of architecture in the system conferred by the other arts allows for singling out the major crosscurrents existing in the course of the history, as well as the peculiarities belonging to architecture as a synthesis of arts, science and technology, definitely influenced by economic and social factors.

By the early 1920s the dogmatism of classicism subsided, yieding to varied formulae of modern architecture that differed form one country to another and from one personality to another. Aware of the fact that a national culture generally cannot exist isolated from world culture, Romanian artists, writers and last but least, the Romanian architects of the time, asserted by their works and attitude their position as participants in the integration in the universal system of values. Romania lies at the crossroads of Western and Easten cultures, which it has synthesized through its own spirituality. Over the centuries, it has reacted in various ways to the major European artistic currents. The interval between the two World Wars though remains a peak moment of the Romanian intelligentsia's adhesion to and participation in world culture. George Matei Cantacuzino, the remarkable architect and theoretician of that period wrote in 1934: "We cannot now disregard, as we have not done in the past, the great currents of ideas that thrill the world".

ROMANIA AFTER WORLD WAR ONE-ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

The creation of the unified national state in 1918 made Romania one of the countries with important prospects of economic development in South-Eastern Europe. The world crisis of 1929- 1933 would not have major repercussions for Romanian society. Moreover, the crisis stimulated owners of capital to launch real estate investments in a bid to avoid the danger of devaluation. The evaolution of the legislative situation too, was congenial. Credits and tax breaks were granted for housing construction, as well as other allowances.

The local administration, represented by mayors open to the renewing movement, backed the daring projects and worked firmly when it come to decisions concerning the evolution of the town, colaborating with valuable experts.

The penetration of the new building technologies occurred at the same time, especially the wide-scale use of reinforced concrete. All these were concerted, as observers noted, with the progressive spirit of the investors, who would consider that modern architecture meets comfort requirements and suits the activities of West-European civilization, and also allowed for the implementation of economically efficient investments by employing technologies free of costly and laborious decoration.

ROMANIA AFTER WORLD WAR ONE. THE CONTEXT CONFERRED BY EXISTING ARCHITECTURE

The penetration of the new artistic currents in Romania found especially in Bucharest a heterogenous architecture, characterized by the coexistence of neo-Classical, Byzantine and Eclectic styles, that would soon be joined also by the neo- Romanian style that incorporated Romanian popular and religous architecture as an important symbol in the aspiration toward the ideal of national union. After 1918, with that ideal accomplished, the spiritual potential of the young generation of architects would vigorously connect with the European vanguard cultural movements, contributing to the development of an architecture comparable to the world's landmark creations. On the other hand, French academism, the stance taken by the Romanian Scool of Architecture, was present in important works built in Bucharest by French architects. The first attempts of Romanian architects to organize and to become aware of their role in society started in 1891, with the setting up of the Society of Romanian Architects, presided over by Nicolae Orascu; their official recognition came in 1932, with the setting up of the Techincal Corps of Architects.

As in the rest of the world, the use of reinforced concrete in engineering architecture surpassed its use in civil architecture. The first grain siloes of reinforced concrete were built in 1888 in the ports of Braila and Galati by engineer Angel Saligny, according to the Monier system; followed by the bridge and highway building. The architecture of those structures, dictated by solution of the structural problems, characterized by simple forms, can be considered as a prelude to the new language of forms. The supporting structure, devised to answer the functional requirements, ruled out decorative elements, leaving the image of the first performances of the new building material of the 20th century.

The use of reinforced concrete for civil buildings started in Romania in 1906, but the strength structure, which was a novelty as regarded the solution, did not have a decisive effect on the aesthetic options.

But for a few exceptions, almost all inter-bellum Romanian architects touched with some of their works on stylistic areas close to turn-of-the-century historical styles. Some even created works that would climax with outstanding achievements of a modern character. Ohers would express themselves at the simultaneously or in close sequences in different stylistic terms, conditioned by their understanding of the local context, the theme of the project or the author's sensitivity to the proposal. Stylistic experiment was often considered as an exercise of virtuosity and as an understanding of the role and social impetus of architecture.

Duliu Marcu, one of the most imminent architects of the period, explained the evolution of his own conception of his works in this way: "Although I had a great inclination to and even easiness with drawing as well as a passion for ornaments and decoration, I have however come to favour lately a simple architecture, free of lavish decoration that, by the propriety of proportions and the plastic harmony, should give the eyes and the reason consummate satisfaction".

THE BEGINNNGS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN ROMANIA. THE 1920s

It was in this context, defined on the one hand by a prosperous economy and a society open to emancipation, and on the other hand by conservative architecture of the beginning-of-the-century conservative architecture, that the young generation of architects welcomed the arrival of the modernist trend.

The Romanian artistic vanguard was manifest even prior to 1920 in Berlin, Zurich and Paris, in such representatives Ilike the painter and architect Marcel Janco, poets Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, founders of the DADA movement, and sculptor Constantin Brancusi who was already working in Paris. Some students of architecture who were studying in that decade in capitals of Western Europe started showing a weakness for the new artistic current that had already taken shape and that would account for a radical change in behaviour of those who would be considered pioneers of modern architecture.

Having a somewhat different evolution from that of the fine arts, music or literature, architecture did not know a stage that might be defined as a vanguard movement proper in terms of negativist or challenging impetus. That tendency was directed toward the idea of progress, toward a synchronization with European civilization.

Modern Romanian architecture would assert itself through a well- balanced, moderate renewal, yet finding resources for an intense force of expression. A little later in relation to artistic and literary currents, modern architecture made its debut in Romania in the second half of the 1920s, after which it gained a very wide following.

Confirming an evolution marked by relations and influences of the fine arts with architecture, the fact may be not incidental that the first attempts to express the principles launched by the European vanguard belonged to painter and architect Marcel Janco. He studied at ETH in Zurich, where he founded with other personalities, the vanguard artistic movement DADA in 1916. Marcel Janco returned to Romania in 1922, announcing his presence with a show arranged in Bucharest, where his works were selected in such a way as to arrest the attention of the Romanian public who had not met with such events before. His role in the dissemination of vanguard ideas in the Romanian creative spiritual environment materialized with the appearance of Contimporanul review, in June 1922, which he continued to promote. Exciting in content, althought it did not specialize in architecture, "Contimporanul" contained analyses, references and presentations of architectural projects whose novelty marked a radical change of behaviour and an aesthetic sense that would soon replace the conservative tendencies. Marcel Janco published articles that took a definite stand on the prevailing architecture in urban Bucharest and the provinces. A proof of the interest shown in this subject was the 1925 issue (No 53-54) devoted exlusively to architecture. Such articles as "Function and Form" and "The New Architecture" indicate the directions considered worth following in thinking out the new projects: "The new architecture, in lively touch with the fine arts, has, like them, approached the problem of formal simplification, of understanding the materials to be processed, and of destroying, above all, the eclectic idea of styles".

Proving receptive and understanding of the major ideas launched by the Modern Movement at a European level, Marcel Janco considered architecture to be a moulding of the interior space. In relation with this idea, "Contimporanul" devoted issue No 57-58 of 1925 solely to the Interior. The theoretical preoccupations expressed in the magazine would be extended soon to experiments with form and function directly on drawing up the projects. Starting in 1926, these buildings, erected as one or two-storey dwellings, are in fact the first modern achievements known in Romania. Without containing elements of great complexity, they have the merit of demonstrating innovations in terms of composition accounting for a beginning of modernist architecture in Romania.

Various other publications disseminated and analyzed in their pages the approaches of the pioneers of modern European architecture. Their role was very important in attracting the generation of architects of the 1930s, and they can be credited with having created a demonstrative, sometimes even eulogisic theoretical platform that favoured the acceptance and adoption of the new architecture by the Romanian society.

Journalistic activity and criticism related to architecture in the inter-bellum period acquainted the most varied sectors of the Romanian intelligentsia with the ideas of the modernist trend, while displaying a mature critical attitude and well-balanced, competent stands as well as polemics and conflicting opinions. Texts referring to the aesthetics of Romanian architecture, to the controversies between traditionalism and modernism were comprised of such in-depth analyses as those contributed by architects George Matei Cantacuzino, Horia Creanga, Octav Doicesu and others.

At the same time as Marcel Janco, but quite independently, architect Horia Creanga made a smashing debut at the beginning of the 1930s, as the true founder of modern Romanian architecture. The influence of his personality on architects of his same generation was significant. The influence of his personality on architects of his same generation was significant. He arrived with his wife Lucia Dumbraveanu from Paris in 1927, where he had taken his architect's diploma at Beaux Arts, the bastion of French academism at that time. However, he would bring home the ideas of the European vanguard which he had discovered on his own and in direct touch with current publications. He became the promoter of a personal architecture, filtered through his own sensibility. His creation would not fit definitely into any of the European modernist currents. Horia Creanga gave arhitecture, a modern, often very complex expression, firm in composition and always with nuanced refinement.

Horia Creanga would not consider the modern movement in Romania as a discontinuous episode in the history of Romanian architecture, for it regained the simplicity of forms of our popular architecture, which he gave novel interpretations. "Noticing the lines of the Romanian cula (peasant house), which of you could say that the architecture I am referring to (i.e. modern architecture) is uprooted from the past? Unlike what is happening with us, there is an abrupt departure from tradition between the new conception and the styles specific to the Western countries (Flemish, Gothic, Renaissance etc)".

This assertion expresses what is evident in his creations and what distinguishes this architecture from the approaches of the international vanguard which is by definition conceived as a total divorce from the past. It may be one of the explanations of how the modern movement made its debut in Romania, wihout the soundings of a vanguard in search of self-definition, but with works that demonstrate from the onset a maturity of thinking, a well mastered force of creation, relying upon new principles which however spring from an old aesthetic tradition, long tested by popular architecture.

This idea of continuity would appear also in the writings of George Matei Cantacuzino: "...Modern architecture seeks its laws at the source of the useful, of the constructive and of the social idea. It does not run counter to the aspirations of our architecture, it only opens a wide array of possiblities". The "manifesto" project for the ARO building in Bucharest, with which Horia Creanga made a name for himself, was selected in 1929 following a contest. Located in one of the capital's thoroughfares, it proposed an architecture of a novel kind by how it conceived form and function. Until its completion in 1931, the project went through successive changes, reaching in the end a categorial plastic expression, with a simplified language of forms favouring a definite volumetry. Appreciated and criticized alike, the project was a milestrone, influencing the creative will and capacity of his contemporaries.

ROMANIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE 1930s

The wide-scale launching of modern architecture in Romania occured in the early 1930s, when it began to be regarded as a symbol of progress and opening to the new civilization of the 20th century. Now, it would go through impressive expansion, in quality and quantity, definively marking the silhouette of the capital and of some of the country's big cities.

A genuine explosion of creativity started in those years. It would match the selective power of the Romanian cultural environment, and its evolution would unfold along the following lines:

• The Romanian architects worked independently. They did not form groups like the Bauhaus, De Stijl or other such "schools" that generated distinct vanguard curents. Establishing independently their aesthetic preferences, they did exercise their options in matters of form and function in a concerted manner, although always through the prism of their own sensibility and artistic affinities. This activity of well defined personalities resulted in works that while showing no lack of common major tendencies managed to exert the independence of each architect, no less than the relatively unitary manner in which they processed in a continous dynamics what the international modern movement conveyed.

• The inter-bellum Romanian architecture is far from being a "duplicate" of vanguard trends already consecrated world-wide. Differing in meanings, it assimilated, in a continous synchronization with its own cultural and spiritual paradigm what the essential principles of the modernist current were launching.

• The existence of a congruence can be noted between the social frame of mind of that time and the modern expression in form and function of the architectural achievements. Although not deprived of theoretical polemics, the penetration of the Modern Movement in Romania proves the permissiveness and contribution of that generation of Romanian architects to the achievement of the great world values.

A brief survey of the creative process undertaken by the major Romanian architects demonstrates the existence of several common landmarks, essential to what the modernist current in architecture meant for Romania.

1. Position toward the existing context
2. Major functional-aesthetic landmarks
3. Major principles of solving functional problems

I. POSITION TOWARD EXISTING CONTEXT

• The suitability of analysing the relationship between the existing builit space and the new architecture is justified first of all for the buildings located in the urban structure of Bucharest availabe at that time for major interventions at a city and district level. The available plots offered the opportunity to integrate projects into the built urban texture, but also to insert major urban additions that still define the character of Bucharest.

  The most telling example is the Magheru-Balcescu Boulevard, the major axis in the urban composition of the capital. It was traced as early as the last century, after the model devised by Haussman in 1853-1869 for Paris. The completion of the fronts of this thoroughfare in the spirit brought by modern architecture, creates a unitary urban group, that does not compare with other capitals on the Continent the historical centres of which were already constrituted at that time.

• Without being contextualist in relation to other historical styles, inter-belllum modern architecture in Romania determined in a given built context the establishment of new landmarks, dominated by the values of the modernist current, which enhanced the aesthetic, composition and functional value of the site, thus representing a new form of integration into the environment.

• Modern architeture operates from principles that very clearly define it in relation to the natural features of the site, containing a natural and rational adjustment to the natural aspects of the terrain. They are used regularly in distributing the functions in consideration of the cardinal points, or in capitalizing on the elements of vertical systematization. Problems concerning sunshine and illumination of the built space were also taken into consideration in the building rules that required the observance of acceptable vicinity, with a street profile containing recesses at the higher levels in keeping with the optimal prospect of the respective artery.

• Worth mentioning is the judicious use of the geometry (vertical and horizontal) of the existing plots. There is a relative determination of the terrain's form, that leads to adequate functional and aesthetic solutions and to a rational use of the site.

• The values of the right angle are skilfully turned to advantage by most architects. However, interventions existed that composed rectangular volumes with areas of curved surfaces. The latter articulate the rigorously drawn volumes, introducing graduated perception. We could say the moulding of the curved surfaces, their subtle play, gives the urban landscape a spectific feature easy to recognize.

• The plastic of the facade almost constantly emphasizes the horizontality, alternating with vertical elements, marked by the clearance of volumes, with the goal of illustrating the principle of composition or of relating it to the city environment determined by the evolution and dynamics of urban life.

• In Romania, the formal simplicity brought by modern architecture has often been related. Even by the fathers of this architecture, to the force of Romanian popular architecture. The accuracy of forms, the pure volumes, the clear composition and the refined simplicity of popular Romanian architecture, noticed also by Le Corbusier during his Romanian sojourn at the beginning of the century, can be considered essential requisites that facilitated Romanian architects' creative thinking.

In this respect, one can distringuish several levels at which inter-bellum architectural creation was thought out:

• The cases analyzed vary from formal adjustment to the new aesthetic canons, to the modern shaping of the factions, changed in their essence, which, but for a few notable exceptions, would never reach the complete flexibility experienced by western architecture.

• Architecture, in essence more pragmatic than the other arts, will explore functional directions that answer requirements of comfort and civilization perfectly in tune with Romanian society's aspirations. Horia Creanga states concisely the conception of his architecture, carried on and developed by the entire generation of architects: "A sincere and simple expression of modern needs - this is our architecture. It expresses the beautiful through simplicity and the useful through comfort. This art is not a temporary whim, the useful and the enjoyable are ancient truths".

• The function becomes a decisive component in the process of creation. The functional necessities are complex: starting from direct social necessities, to necessities pertaining to human psychology, technology etc; in the end they represent the level of comfort.

Analysing modern inter-bellum architecture according to its major themes of design is one of the possible ways to approach and understand this phenomenon in all its complexity. In broad lines, the themes of the works can be grouped into:

1. Dwellings
2. Socio-cultural programs
3. Industrial constructions

URBANISM

The country's tremendous economic and political growh after the formation of the Romanian national state in 1918 brought about the malignant development of some of Romania's big cities, expressed in the emergence and development of industry, a growing density of population in the central areas and the emergence of new districts, all of them sprawling and chaotic in character. Western Europe had already gone past that stage of city development. The promotters of the Modern Movement championed at that moment two major differing from country to country: the first direction sought the "Style", speculating on the compositional-aesthetic effects and obeying by the slogan "everything that is acceptable has to be preserved"; the second, more radical principle sought "life in nature", taking for its model the "Garden City" and the "Athens Charter". After World War One, Greater Romania;s cities and especially the capital had a special situation in point of problems related to urbanism and physical planning. The Big urban restructurings of the 19th century Europe, whose climax was the French model (George Eugene Haussmann in Paris, over 19853-1869), were reverberated in Romania as well, with the tracing at the end of the century of the two major axes of the capital, east-west and north-south.

Whereas in the case of the European cities, the "big axes" brutally tore apart the extant Medieval texture, in Bucharest's case, for all "sacrifices" (the tracing of those axes helped starting the organization of the previously formless urban structure. These interventions put requisites in place for the application in the inter-bellum period, of modern theories in the approach to be taken in solving the capital's urban problems. Romanian urban modernism consisted first of all in the easy and natural adjustment to an advanced theoretical stage of organization of the city, second in the identification of the urban phenomenon with the systematics (the system) and the employment of the notion of "systematization" in relation to town planning and third, in the original way of blending the above- mentioned tendencies and their adjustment to the local conditions. In 1935, a team of experts, architects and engineers, worked out the Capital's Master Plan (CMP), one of the most advanced in Eastern Europe. It became operational in 1938, its content accepting in a selective manner elements from the two directions of development of the then urbanism: respect for the aesthetic principles of composition would give a feeling of lastigness for the city residents, allowing architecture to impress itself on the urban ensemble; the Athens Charter principles would influence the prposals for functional zoning and for traffic structure, and the valences of the "Garden City" can be traced in the system of establishing the lots, in the ideas for developping the chain of lakes and for turning to advantage the natural elements in the northern part of the capital.

Analysis of the CMP emphasizes the character of its main provisions:

• Development of the traffic network took account of what had already been done (for instance, the east-west ad north-south axes and the main ring of the city: their completion laid the foundations for the present-day radial concentric plan).

• Functional zoning traced for the next 40-50 years the figure of a capital withy residential, industrial and green zones in a system, limiting at the same time the expansion of the city limits.

• The character of big zones of the Capital, esseantially a part of the "Gargen City" concept, was revamped through lot distribution and development that maintained and promoted the positive elements of Bucharest's natural environment.

• The modern city is considered as a living organism in which private initiative is kept within reasonable limits and where the provisional and ephemereal shall be eliminated.

Consequent to that "legislative context" of wide opening, the Capital knew several interventions that illustrated the spiritual and creative potential of the generation of Romanian architects and urbanists under consideration. The most important of them were:

1. The completion of the north-south axis (Balcescu - Magheru - 1848 Boulevards) and of its fronts, a fact that led to the emergence of an urban insert of modern architecture without precedent or match in the Continent.

2. The completion of the lot distribution of several residential districts, like Parcul Jianu, Parcul National, Vatra Luminoasa etc.

3. The furnishing of the squares and main crossroads of the city with reference elemts in the urban volumetric itinerary.

4. The development of the Dambovita river course and of the lakes in the northern part of the city.

5. The establishement and structing of the main industrial zones. Starting in 1929, acording to the Local Administration Law, all cities and urban spas had to draw up their own master plans and urban development plans. Examples: Brasov, Craiova, Cluj, Sfantu Gheorghe etc. The contests for most interesting town planning solutions for sea-side localities or for certain zones of cities became a practice that would help select and promote the most valuable ideas in urbanism.

It can be concluded that urbanism and modern architecture in inter-bellum Romania developed in a congenial atmosphere, backed also by a legislation containing the main intentions of the world-wide modern movement, well substantiated theoretically, pursuing rational, moderate directions of evolution, very profound in their understanding of the extant built contextual system and social psychology generally.

Without being ostentatious in gestures and decisions, this urbanism created rules and directions to be followed, the validity of which, by coherence and logic, stands to this day.

CONCLUSIONS

The modern movement expressed in Romanian architecture and urbanism was assimilated around the 1930s into the Romanian society by great openness, acceptance and receptiveness. Strongly anchored in material and social determinations, modern Romanian architecture most clearly illustrates Romanian society's cultural fluency and wish for advancement.

Modernism in architecture and urbanism had unique significance in Romania, bringing about its marriage with the other arts of modern world culture.

The expression acquired by the modernist current in Romanian architecture is not a replica of vanguard currents lauched elsewhere in Europe. it is a distinct sequence in the development and interpretation of principles throught the filter of the indigenous culture, that led to a different, independent process of creation through which Romanian architects made an important contribution to universal values as a whole.

Becoming a "world phenomenon", modern architecture played a major role in the transformation or Romania in the 1930s, through a spectacular leap to civilization remaining the unquestionable proof of one of the most fertile stages in our cultural history.

Last update: 1999, September 8
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