what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020
Showing posts with label conservation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservation. Show all posts

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Fiddling while Bucharest....builds


In her recent blogs, Sarah has been giving great coverage to the destructionivists who occupy all positions of power and (apparently influence) here in Romania – and the Ceaucescu tendencies in particular of Mayor Oprescu (a surgeon no less) in relation to old Bucharest buildings.
The inclusion of buildings on a list of protected patrimony means nothing to him – nor laws which forbid eviction of people during winter months.
Today, we are witnessing a second 'systematisation' of Bucharest, which has accelerated since 2005. Its new face sees towers rising up to twenty floors in architectural zones replacing buildings of historical and architectural value. They are spilling into neighbouring areas - look no further than the recent Roman Catholic Cathedral, St Joseph's.
The segment affected by the demolitions included a mass of buildings of traditional architectural heritage representative of the capital. Now they are gone. Hotel Marna, the Nicolae Dobre House, the Constantin Radulescu House, The Dacia cinema, the house where the national poet Mihai Eminescu lived with Veronica Micle to name just a few...all gone. Gone forever. Irreplaceable jewels impossible to rebuild, impossible to replicate. Hala Matache comes next if it hasn't gone already. Twenty storey eye-sores will replace them. Bucharest is being deleted. An inestimable cultural value belonging to the Roumanian people has disappeared in the hands of the Mayor of Bucharest, Sorin Oprescu. The man has no Roumanian culture and no respect for it. This is how City Hall 'manages' historic Bucharest.
Dinu C. Giurescu is named after his grandfather, Constantin, who lived,as previously mentioned, at str. Berzei, 47, destroyed by Ceausescu. He carries the 'C' in his name proudly in memory, and spent his childhood in this house. He said, "We know the roads are congested but that does not justify returning to Ceausescu's demolition process of the few remaining historic streets left in Bucharest. There are monuments on str Berzei - noble, nostalgic and beautiful. The street is a sample of Old Bucharest which, by some miracle, survived [zic Nicolae Ceausescu's urban planning]." Indeed they did survive Ceausescu - but they have not survived Oprescu.
Does Oprescu realise what he is doing? Does he have any idea how loathed he is? Does he not give any thought to what he has done to Roumanian culture, history, architecture and patrimony? To the Roumanian people? Does this man have any conscience?.I think not. He is blinded by money and his own self-importance. Indeed, Roumania's latest urban dictator in a Mayor's position. How could this cardiologist break so many hearts?
The reaction of my Romanian partner is interesting – despite her admiration for European conservation she’s none too sympathetic to the few local protestors who turned up when the bulldozers crushed the old shell which has been standing for years on the corner across from the Mandache market (and the hotel next to it). “What have they been doing in the last 20 years when the old buildings have been empty and crumbling?” she asks. Clearly people like Valentin Mandache have been trying to develop an appreciation of the charm of the Romanian architectural tradition - his website gives us every day a delightful feature from the older buildings here. But he has said nothing about the demolitions which have, rightly, aroused Sarah’s ire. Protestors such as are a forlorn minority. And I came across a publication yesterday which may explain this passivity. Produced by the Romanian Architectural association Arhitect, it was a nicely bound 2 volume collection (in Romanian and English) of articles from their professional journal over the past 20 years – entitled After Twenty Years. I was initially excited to have a chance to follow the thoughts of the profession but was surprised to note an absence of diagrams, sketches, drawings or pictures. And, when I settled down to read the text, I was quite horrified with its abstract gibberish – all drawn, it seemed, from Western semiotics and having little or nothing to do with the tactile business of buildings. Of course, in a country where everyone builds their own houses, Romanian architects are in a curious position!
As I was writing this, I remembered an article Simon Jenkins had written last year on how close Britain came to the same destruction of its history-
We have forgotten, who ever knew, how close familiar Britain came in the 60s to going the way of eastern Europe. Those who regarded themselves as in the van of taste wanted British cities demolished. The architecture and town planning professions, led by the Royal Institute of British Architects, were almost universally destructive. Victorian Britain was derided as ugly, largely because it stood in the way of fees. Scorn was heaped on Gilbert Scott's Foreign Office and his St Pancras hotel. The only Victorian buildings mostly left sacrosanct were places of worship. Nobody could afford to rebuild them. To celebrate its 50th birthday, the Victorian Society has published Victorians Revalued, a book recalling its battle honours. It is a noble record. Back in the 60s the society was the SAS of the conservation movement. It was founded after the demolition of the Euston Arch in 1961, a vandalism personally approved by the philistine Harold Macmillan, desperate to appear modern. Two environment ministers, Geoffrey Rippon and Peter Walker, planned to demolish the "government precinct", including the Foreign Office, and the entire eastern side of Bishopsgate in the City. The architects Leslie Martin and Colin Buchanan proposed to flatten the south end of Whitehall from Downing Street to the river, and the houses of parliament.
Five years of relentless campaigning by the Victorian Society defeated most of these plans. At the same time, with Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman in lead, the society saved St Pancras. Next came a signal triumph over the Greater London Council at Covent Garden. In Liverpool, battle was joined against Graeme Shankland's plan to demolish the entire city centre, at the same time as T Dan Smith's Newcastle started to vanish under the wrecker's ball.
The story of these campaigns reads like a history of the Great War. Lost were the battles of Eaton and Trentham halls, the Coal Exchange and Barings bank in the City, the Imperial Institute in Kensington, Birmingham's Central library and Leeds's Park Row. Won were the battles of Carlton House Terrace, Covent Garden, King's Cross and Liverpool's Albert Dock. A climax came in 1974 with the V&A's sensationally successful 1974 exhibition, The Destruction of the English Country House. Before then a house was being destroyed almost every week; afterwards destruction virtually ceased. Never was art more potent.
It is hard in retrospect to appreciate how cliff-edge were these David and Goliath contests, and how desperately alone were the Davids. Against them were big money, big government and big architecture. The RIBA represented not a profession, let alone an art, but a financial lobby. At public inquiries, developers and architects called witnesses to argue for demolition – often corrupt art historians – whose payments were never revealed. Those whose sole concern was public aesthetics had to use their own time and money. Time and again they won. The survival of Victorian Britain was their reward. The story was not just public against private interest. It needed a revolution in taste.
Many factors brought about a change. The charm of Betjeman's poetic propaganda depicted the 19th century not as grimly Dickensian but as quaint and loveable (helped by ITV's Upstairs Downstairs). Clean air and restoration revealed the decorative subtlety of the Victorians' gothic and classical themes.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Heritage again


It was the Paul Kingsnorth book which gave me the Keynes quotation which now stands this week in the Quotes which head the various links on the right-hand side of this site. And lo, a discussion thread a few days later gave me a link to a book most of which is being serialised online which echoes these principles in setting out a possible approach for the USA – see here. Please note that I originally put the wronk link - and this is now the correct link.
And, another heritage example from Srah in Romania.
How sad (and frustrating) to read HERE that Romanian Rail (CFR) has decided to close the railway stretch between Oravita and Anina (Banat) because it is 'unprofitable'... Not only is it one of the most spectacular mountain railroads in Europe and thus would be a great national loss, but there are villages which would be cut off without it, and increased unemployment would be added to these areas in the event of such a tragic, erroneous decision. The Oravita-Anina line is a national treasure with a proud place on the National List of Monuments - and yet even that doesn't seem to bear any weight when it comes to making money, as we have seen time and time again in Bucharest with the very frequent mutilation of patrimony and heritage.
Built in 1847-1863, it is the oldest railway on Roumanian territory and runs 33.4 km in 2 hours.... An exceptional technical achievement, it is one of the very steepest lines in all of Europe and with such stunning landscape that it is often compared to the Austrian line Semmering, on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites.
The Association for Roumanian Industrial Archeology / has appealed to CFR and other deciding foruns for the continual use of the Oravita-Anina railway... let's hope they are successful.
'Unprofitable'??? Doesn't the government realise the gold-mine this railway could be? Why, in a country of such natural beauty and tradition, is it so impossible to see the marketing possibilities?! It never ceases to amaze me how tourism is so very badly managed and commercialised. Here we have a railway line that provides transportation and trade to remote towns, offers jobs to those living in the villages envelopped in the most beautiful, awe-inspiring backdrops of stunning scenery. Not only the oldest railway in Roumania but also one of the steepest, it should be as much visited and admired at least as the Trans-Fagarasan in Transylvania. It provides jobs and symbolises a life-line to many Roumanians of this region in the Banat.
The ministries of Commerce, Tourism, Transport and Employment would be far better advised to work together and turn this superb line into a real honey-pot. If it is unprofitable then it is entirely the fault of these ministries who clearly lack vision, imagination and creativity (look no further that the plagerised logo for Roumania to advertise the absurd Carpathian Garden). Railways are fabulous tourist attractions, particularly if they are steam, slow, historical and running through marvellous landscapes such as the Oravita-Anina. Everyone loves them from children who adore watching the steam spiralling backwards and up, up and away, to train enthusiasts, trekkers who can't walk anymore and those who fancy a day out without having to drive, with history and awe-inspiring views thrown in. Hellooooooo?!!!! To close it would be a grave mistake, not only for patrimony, respect and heritage but also for what COULD be made of it. Elena Udrea has such a marvellous job. I would love to be the Roumanian minister of tourism! There is so much to optimise, so much to boast about and so very much to cherish. This stretch of railway line is just one of many...