Rural habitat, heritage and citizenship. The importance of contemporary interventions.

 

Earlier, in this same room, it was referred to the fact that the relationship “Culture – Europe – Citizenship” should absolutely be a part of the city space. In my opinion, this statement is perfectly exact, adequate and correct. Nevertheless, as I have spent most of my own life in an East-European country in which over half the population lives not “in a rural environment” but simply in the countryside – in the most original, primordial and plain meaning of this word – I can not ignore the fact that also for those people who live there, the question of European citizenship should be raised in comparable terms. This is even more true as the problems they are confronted to seem to be similar to those that occur in most of the European countries.

This conclusion belongs in fact, to an East-European group of specialists in architecture and heritage. This team, of which I used to be a member, has found an apparently simple phenomenon: now, or more precisely after the fall of the social and political systems of our countries, there is a reality where in these vast spaces – that could be globally designated as “the country”, but which withholds a whole heritage of architecture and knowledge – constructions are being built haphazardly. The reason that is usually given: that today there is no money, is no longer acceptable as at every step one takes one can discover constructions that are terribly – even horribly – opulent. 

The same phenomenon exists in Romania, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It can be seen that even where there is a legal framework which could organise the development of the land and building permits, the means to reinforce the law are not as efficient as the law itself, whereas the older buildings which were already under threat, suffer and are degraded once again because of this insertion of new constructions indifferent to what is happening around.

 

Photo MTP

Theory of architecture approaches the notion of contemporary architectural intervention more and more with a tendency to minimise the relationship established by the architectural object with the context in which it develops. This is why the analysis of: the existing urban tissue, the relationship of the new intervention and the scale of the town, the village, the road or the landscape – when relevant – the study of the vicinity, the geographic position and, last but not least, the understanding of local culture, are all elements that can lead to the achievement of a contemporary project supposed not to be in an opposition with the environment it is going to integrate, but compose with it.

To be situated in the present, without at the same time disturbing the equilibrium established by the stratification of past time, to know how to analyse the traces of history to be able to draw ones own path does not mean in any way for us to adopt a “conservative” or “nationalist and self-identity” position concerning contemporary architectural creation. On the contrary, this means, at least in our view, not to apply some “ready-made” recipes, “Americanised”, with the only intention of attaining a so-called modernity enlarged to a planetary scale and whose banality is only one of its most insignificant defects.

Nevertheless, aside from theory, it is necessary to look for the practical causes of this phenomenon. Without forgiving the architect – the author of the project! – for his responsibilities, it should be underlined here that an important part of the decision making process rests in the hands of the owner, the one we could call the “initiator”. All this without forgetting that at the next step, both will depend on the representatives of the moment and of the local policies designed to protect the cultural heritage and develop the territory. Considering that the first outlines of the projects are traced directly on the terrain, the destiny of the accomplishment of the “project” depends for a large part, on the ability and capabilities of the craftsmen, simple worker or best building firm.

Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu. Photo MTP. 

All these facts have convinced us to propose to the European Institute of Cultural Routes – implicitly therefore to the Council of Europe – to include in the Itinerary of Rural Habitat a competition for architecture opened to all the countries of Eastern Europe having signed the Convention of Cultural Co-operation. Serbia and Montenegro were eligible. The Institute said “yes”.

This does not mean that the elaboration of this project – let alone its implementation! – was an easy thing. It is a well know fact that usually, even in the countries that benefit from a much larger experience in the field of interdisciplinary projects, the collaboration between the different ministers involved isn’t a natural occurrence. Even less so when the proposition comes from the civil society or from different professional structures.

In our case, the structure that supported the project was the Union of Architects of Romania, in collaboration with the Unions or the Societies of Architects of the countries of Eastern Europe. The partners invited to collaborate to the implementation of this competition were – apart form the European Institute of Cultural Routes, which gave us much more than its technical assistance and its efficient support – the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Public Worksand of the Development of the Territory (Romania), the Direction of Architecture and Heritage of the Ministry of Culture and Communication(France), the Service of National Sites and Monuments (Luxembourg), these were in turn joined by some building firms of Romania and Luxembourg accepting to sponsor a small part of the prizes awarded.

 

Horezu Monastery.

What was the scope of this competition, which has already taken place twice in 1998 and 1999, including an international seminar or “Contemporary Architecture in Rural Sites”, which was organised at the end of the first edition and which brought together in the library of Constantin Brancovan of the Monastery ofHorezou (Romania) members of the jury, prize winning architects and Presidents of the Unions of Architects of Eastern Europe? (It should be mentioned that the second edition was included in the campaign of the Council of Europe: “Europe, a common heritage”).

It was first of all a competition for projects that had already been implemented, one year after 1990. The application forms could be completed by the architect or by the owner of the building (in its totality); the owner receiving one third of the prize the two other thirds being given to the architect. A special prize was given to the building firm or the local constructor for the quality of the implementation of the project. The results of the projects (new constructions, intervention on existing elements, urban development, rural or for the landscape) had to be situated in localities of less than 10.000 inhabitants, which for some was already a small town

Here are some of the declared goals of the competition (I am quoting here the rules which were handed over to the participants):

 

-       to underline the contemporary interventions of architecture implemented with respect for the traditions and local cultures, without refusing to use the forms and materials of the present;

 

-       to create an event capable of underlining the need to adopt regulations concerning new interventions in the small towns and villages which have inherited architectural cultural and natural heritage.

 

amongst the criteria that were taken into account for the awarding of the prises (I am quoting again):

 

-       The integration in the environment (built or natural);

 

-       The choice of the material and the plastic language adopted;

 

-       The quality of the details and the technical execution;

 

-       The functional character of the intervention and its contribution to the cultural value of the site.

 

The international jury chose after very long debates. This prepared in part for the next edition of the competition. Each time the reactions were very important. For example, the part played by architects was much more important doing the second edition and the quality of the projects presented would definitively deserve to be published in a catalogue presenting the exhibitions. After each edition, an exhibition of the prize winners (including projects form Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Ukraine) was organised in the Brukenthal Museum of Sibiu, in the National Theatre and at the Universityof Architecture and Urbanism of Bucharest. The winning projects – plans, photographs accompanied by a page of commentaries by the authors – are often the result of in-depth research of successive layers of drawings and of parallel readings, whereas the contemporary forms proposed by these architects that quote a forgotten detail, that make a reference and that seem to turn their look towards the people from the country, the stones, the trees and the colours that surround them seem – in a rather paradoxical way! – to surprise by their freshness. It is like a return back to poetry.

 

International Jury.

Only one kind of work was absent: the landscape architecture. Why? The question concerns both the organisers of the competition that have formulated the message, and the Unions of Architects that carried it. But this is not the only cause. It is also linked to the teaching of architecture in the schools of Eastern Europe and of the architectural practices that still separate the object from the landscape as a whole. But this is a very different subject...

 

Mrs Constantinescu is architect in Bucarest, Romania

French version.