II. SOCIO-CULTURAL PROGRAMS

Modernism, as seen by inter-bellum society, comprised, in the domain of socio-cultural buildings, the approach to new themes, and the already consecrated programs would be regarded from different positions than those of the past century. The investors' manifest wish to penetrate public consciousness with a modern image was in harmony with the young architects' intention to launch with their creations the new trend of the epoch. Contests of ideas organized for important investments or for problems of town planning led to the selection of daring projects with proposals demonstrating a modern thinking at all stages of devising the solutions. The main areas in which important achievements were recorded can be grouped into:

• Buildings for tourism and leisure
• Buildings for health care
• Buildings for education, culture and administration
• Buildings for national and international expositions

BUILDINGS FOR TOURISM AND LEISURE

Considered for good reason to be a modern activity, expanded starting with that tumultous period of history, tourism, entertainment and implicitly the hotel constructions to match them, find an expression in teresting projects placed in urban settings or in sea-side and mountain resorts that offered a novel subject of study, leading to special solutions. A brief analysis leads to the following findings:

• Hotels placed in an urban setting tend to maintain aspirations toward monumentality, generally displaying a vertical treatment of the facades and a composition of volumes with tendencies toward severe discipline of forms. They retain something of the sober look of buildings existing in the city centres. However, the newness ins manifest in function and language of forms, relying on elegance and a simple and dignified composition. Examples: Hotel ARO, 1937-38, Brasov, architect H. Creanga; Hotel Ambasador, 1935-36, Bucharest, architect Arghir Culina; Hotel Savoy (Cina), Timisoara, 1936, architect Michael Wolf etc.

• Hotels placed in a natural setting, defined by elements of spectacular outline, show an ability to turn to advantage the qualities of the site, inserting the volume in a harmonious and rational manner and adjusting it to the character of the natural surroundings. Here the approach to volumes is toward horizontal registers alternating solid surfaces with windowed areas marked here and there by vertical accents. The projects have clear functional directions, in harmony with an efficient employment of the terrain's qualities, an optimal orientation of the rooms meant for the public, with a suitable distribution of the annexes serving the smooth functioning of hotels. Examples: Hotel Bellona, 1933, Eforie architect G.M. Cantacuzino; Hotel "Level 1400", 1930-1937, architects M. Cherembach and I. Teodorescu etc. Another category of buildings related to tourism and leisure includes the hostels and rest houses. Usually built for exployees of private or state companies, they contain spaces for club activities, meetings and hotel-like accommodation units. The freedom of the program and the special qualities of the sites stimulated the elaboration of projects in which coherence and force of expression predominate. The existing examples are edifying: the rest house of the Gaz-Electra company, Snagov is representative of the activity of one of the great architects and professors of the epoch, Octav Doicescu. Here one again finds simple surfaces, right angles the transparence of big windowed sufaces and fluent interior spaces reunited in a free creative gesture. Another example is the Hostel of the Teaching Staff, Eforie, designed by another remarkable architect professor, Constantin Lotzu. It is closer to a hotel program, integrated into the surrounding landscape, the building fits in the horizontality of the sea.

Horia Creanga, ARO Hotel Brasov, 1937-1938	Arghir Culina, Ambasador Hotel Bucharest, 1935-1936
M. Cheremboch, Hotel "Cota 1400" Sinaia, 1930-1933

BUILDINGS FOR HEALTH CARE

There was an increased preoccupation with health care buildings. Hospitals and especially sanatoria became an important theme all over the world. So the fact comes as no surprise that numerous brainstorming competitions were organized for such programs, not that the works from this period are amblematic of inter-bellum architecture. Projects of this kind gave thorough consideration to problems of functional flows and hygiene norms, but no less to the concerns with a simple plastic expression, of pure geometric bodies. Synthesizing the creative capacity of some of the most outstanding Romanian architects, these buildings have remained landmarks or modern architecture between the two World Wars. Representative examples: The Toria Red Cross Sanatorium, Covasna, 1935, professor architect Grigore Ionescu; the Popper Sanatorium, Predeal, 1936, architect Marcel Janco; the Bugaz Sanatorium, Cetatea Alba, 1933-34, architect Angello Viecelli. We distinguish here a well-balanced, distinct conception mastered in relation to what is considered as being the newness contribuited by the Modern Movement and to what had already been instituted as "International Style".

Constantin Iatzu, Hostel for the Teacher Staff, Eforie, 1937

Angelo Viecelli, Carmen Silva Sanatorium, project for contest, 1936

BUILDINGS FOR EDUCATION, CULTURE AND ADMINISTRATION

By nature, these buildings are located exclusively in an urban setting. The stages and course of their evolution went beyond what was available in terms of traditional options for the monumental. Investors open to "Europeanizaton" supported the architects' almost unanimous tendency to come up with a new conception of architecture. Cultural institutions like Romanian Academy called on young young, but already reputable architects, to draw up projects that were often definitive for prestige in the profession. Examples: The Dalles Foundation, Bucharest, 1932, architect Horia Teodoru; the Romanian Academy Library, Bucharest, 1936-1938, professor architect Duiliu Marcu. Ingenious solutions of letting natural light in the show rooms appear here, as well as new principles of library functioning, through the judicious relation of functions, details and specific furniture. The simple and severe deployment of the volumes employs the rhythm of vertical elements that leads to a well-structured composition, giving new value to the old design principles.

The attitude toward school buildings was changing in recongnition of the note of the new that was appearing in Romanian architects' activity. Projects for education are distinguished by renouncing all forms of decorativism. Experiments in form and function made spectacular leaps, generated by the imperatives of modern teaching. Examples of these characteristics are: Project for a Commerce School Group, Bucarest, 1937; the Floreasca Primary School, Bucharest, 1936-1937, architect H. Creanga. The Andrei Saguna high school for boys, Sibiu, 1935, and the Academic College of King Ferdinand University Cluj, 1937, architect G. Cristinel, where the designer's expression was still marked by the moment of separation form the classical, monumental orientation, and the introduction of new elements in compositional structure.

Horia Teodoriu, Dalles Hall, Bucharest

Gabriel Cristinel, Academic College of the King Ferdinand I University, Cluj, 1937

The buildings for sports activities are associated with the big projects to develop green belts and parks. The examples are numerous: the Kisseleff Swimming Pool, Bucharest, 1929, architect K. Janco; the Project for a Workers' Stadium, Strada Veseliei, Filaret, Bucharest, 1930, architect Tascu Ciulli; one ONEF Stadium, Bucharest, 1933-1939 (no longer existant), architect H. Creanga.

At the same time new buildings for railway and air stations were also erected: The Bucharest-Mogosoaia Royal Railway Station and the Sinaia Royal Railway Station, 1936, architect D. Marcu; The Cetatea Alba Airport and the Cernauti Airport, architect C. Dragu etc. The newness of the programs of these projects corresponded with the rationally thought out functional solutions. Although retaining a shade of monumentality, they departed from traditional achitecture, steadily pursuing an adjustment to the function requirements.

Public buildings for offices and company headquarters became a design theme frequently commissioned by various clients, in the context of the society's general development. Big private companies or state monopolies had new headquarters built for themselves, that would meet the latest functional necessities and that distinguished themselves by sober and harmonius proportions, being created by some of the most representative Romanian architects. Of the numerous existing examples we mention: Project for the Railway Administrative Palace, 1930, architects Titu Evolceanu and O. Doicescu; the Telephone Palace, Bucharest, 1933, architects Louis Week, Walter Froy, Van Saanen Algi; Kocsis company building, Brasov, 1930-1933, architect H. Coloman; Project for the ISAR building, 1936, architect D. Marcu; State Monopolies Building, Calea Victorie, Bucharest, 1934-1941, architect D. Marcu; Insurance House, Brasov, 1935-1937, architect I. Ionescu; Central House of Social Insurance, Timisoara, 1936, architects I. Ionescu and Leiba Simon; the Adriatica Building, Calea Victoriei, Bucharest, 1935, architects R. Fraenkel, Teller and Dem. Savulescu etc.

The works with such themes, some completely new, others reconsidered from new positions, were an opoortunity to make valuable contributions in the creation of a new state of architecture and the progressive modernization of urban centres. The national and international expositions were opportunities to display cultural and economic achievements. Among the shows organized at home, the Bucharest Month became in the inter-bellum period a traditional event. From its unveiling in 1935, located in Park Carol and initiated by the mayor Alexandru Donescu, one can see the preoccupation with problems concerning the evolution of towns and urban planning. The show was part of a wide-scale program drawn up with the goal of a judicious organization of the country's major cities and especially of the capital. Herastrau Park hosted part of the event in subsequent years. The development and planning of that recreational area with its remarkable natural scenery was, itself, one of the acts of the Exposition's organizers. The exhibition pavilions were conceived as components in a representative architecture, thus inspiring a range of forms that remained more classical than modernist. The stylistic option of these pavilions tended more to the German or Italian neo-classical formulae that generated in the 1930s the requisites of the emergence in those countries as well as the continent over of the so-called "representative architecture". The international expositions potentially offered an open exchange of information and ideas in the domains of science, technology, the arts and culture generally. Romania's pavilions in various years of such international convocations were dominated by a way of thinking about a representative plan that promoted an architecture less oriented to the Modern Movement, than to neo-classicism or the neo-Romaian style, though with clear intentions of formal clarity and simplicity that indicate an original manner of decoding and processing the stylistic canons. We mention here: The Pavilion of Glass, at the Romanian Industries Exposition, 1934, architect Jean A. Melun; The Bucharest Month Exposition, Bucharest, 1938, architects H. Creanga, Haralamb Georgescu, M. Ricci, I. Davidescu, engineer Vlad Radovici; The Romanian Pavilion at the International Exposition, Brussels, 1935, architect Constantin Mosinschi; The Romanian Pavilion at the International Exposition, Belgrade, 1937, architect Victor Smigelschi; The Romanian Restaurant at the International Exposition, Paris, 1937, architect D. Marcu; The Romanian Pavilion at the International Exposition, Paris, 1937, architect D. Marcu; The Romanian Pavilion at the International Exposition, New York, 1939, architect G.M. Cantacuzino; The Romanian Pavilion at the Triennial, Milan, 1941, architects N. Nedelescu and N. Cucu; CFR Pavilion at the Bucharest Month Exposition 1940, architect N. Nedelscu etc.

The importance of the national and international Expositions should be seen primarily as a legitimation of cultural, technical and schientific achievements on a national and international scale set in direct contact with the most important events in the world at the time.

Last update: 1999, September 8
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