Valentin Mandache, architectural historian

Considerations on the built heritage of southeast Europe

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Protected: Tour for Polish Institute: BUCHAREST AS THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE BALKANS

23/11/201130/11/2011Valentin Mandache

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Architectural Heritage, Bucharest, Little Paris Architecture of Romania, Bucharest, Eastern Europe, History, Identity, La Belle Epoque, Little Paris, Little Paris of the Balkans, Romania, Romanian Architecture, South East Europe

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The evolution of the economic prosperity and purchasing power in Romania seen in the size and accoutrements of Neo-Romanian style houses. On the left hand side is a small national style house from the 1910s (built on an extended footprint of a previous wagon type Little Paris house), when the economy was based on grain production and exports, and very little industry, while the one on right, much ampler, better designed and provided with decorations and modern mod-cons, is built in the 1930s, when the economy was based on oil production and exports (one of the largest producers in the world then), agriculture as well as industry and a large internal market. What a # difference twenty years of evolution can make, much faster than nowadays! Cotroceni quarter, Bucharest. #neoromanian #economichistory #cotroceni #bucharest #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
A problem of style diagnosis for some of the 1900-1916 built houses of Bucharest. That is the era of the early Neo-Romanian, when the national style was still finding its coordinates and the previous Ottoman architecture was still echoing powerfully in the new designs, but it was also a period of Orientalist fashions in visual arts. In my opinion those houses difficult to diagnose, such as the examples presented here, are an overlap, mix, convergence between the early Neo-Romanian and Orientalism. One of the main promoters of the design was the architect Ioan N Socolescu. #stylediagnosis #neoromanian #orientalism #bucharest #1900s #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
Imaginative adaptation of a Diocletian window into a Neo-Romanian style one, of a 1930s built house in Romana area of Bucharest. Today there would be impossible to make such an artefact in Romania: the symbolism knowledge and technological knowhow are lost after communism and post-communism, there is a complete lack of imagination characterising the “designers” (so-called architects), and there are not craftsmen around, an intellectual desert. #neoromanian #diocletianwindow #bucharest #1930s #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
Encounter with a hungry lame street cat during an architectural history fieldwork foray in one of the rundown areas of central Bucharest. #cat #cats #bucharest #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
A good example of late Neo-Romanian style design, a phase of the national style architecture of Romania in the 1930s and 40s, which purged itself of the Ottoman heritage decorative elements and symbolism of the previous decades/ phases and over-emphasised the Byzantine Imperial heritage in a modern, confident, Art Deco cast, in tone with the politics of the national identity of Fascist Romania of that period. This doorway in Bucharest, Dacia area, would have sported a keel arch of Ottoman/ Moldovan Gothic inspiration, decorated with tulip motifs, but now it became a triumphal Byzantine, rose decorated arch. This is one of the characteristics and aesthetics problems of the Neo-Romanian style, namely that is less art and architecture and more politics of identity. In fact if one goes in a Bucharest tour (with yours truly, of course), can easily chart the rise of the right wing politics of Romania just by looking at the evolution of architecture, especially of the national style. #neoromanian #doorway #politics #nationalidentity #1930s #bucharest #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
An interesting 18th c architecture (1780, from the reign of Maria Theresa), which prefigures the Neo-Romanian of more than a century later, in the Cross of Captain Ilie Birt in Schei quarter of Brasov/ Kronstadt, Saxon Transylvania. Birt was a colourful personage of the 18th c Romanian community of Brasov, anchored in both the Habsburg Empire’s and Ottoman Wallachia’s establishments, a man of both frontiers. The cross combines in a vernacular way the Baroque of Austria with the Ottoman Baroque of Wallachia, thus making it inadvertently an avant-la-lettre Neo-Romanian style monument. #iliebirt #cross #brasov #schei #kronstadt #saxontransylvania #transylvania #baroque #ottomanbaroque #neoromanian #southeasteurope #balkans #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
Interesting late Neo-Romanian style portal, from the 1930s, of the Andrei Muresan high school in Brasov/ Kronstadt, which combines the Wallachian/ Byzantine heritage of the Romanian communities with the Gothic one of the Transylvanian Saxons, a metaphor of the multi-culturalism of Transylvania. #transylvania #brasov #kronstadt #saxontransylvania #neoromanian #schei #southeasteurope #multiculturalism #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
Dove, parakeet screeches in the courtyard of Seville Cathedral, the former mosque’ ablution fountain yard. #sevillestudytrip #casedeepoca #valentinmandache
17th c Transylvanian Mannerism ceiling decorations, found in Saxon houses from Kronstadt/ Brasov. They represent a very particular development in art in a culturally isolated region, a Protestant land surrounded and patronised by an Islamic power, threatened by a Catholic one and intertwined with the Balkan Orthodox world. The decorations somehow prefigure the Art Nouveau, of which Transylvania is so famous. #transylvania #saxontransylvania #kronstadt #brasov #renaissance #mannerism #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

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