Valentin Mandache, architectural historian

Considerations on the built heritage of southeast Europe

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Historic Houses of Romania word cloud

31/12/201105/01/2012Valentin Mandache

Wordle cloud - Historic Houses of Romania — Word cloud showing the most used 150 words of the front page of Historic Houses of Romania blog, generated by wordle.net on 30 December 2012

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Architectural Styles

Art Deco
Art Nouveau
Beaux Arts
Ethnographic
Historicist
Little Paris
Mediterranean
Modernist
Neoromanian
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Ottoman
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Vernacular
Wallachian

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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

Acanthus leaves in Italica, Spain. #acanthus #italica #sevillestudytrip #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

From my last December Seville Study Trip: posing on the bank of Guadalquivir, in front of the replica of Victoria, the only ship from Admiral Magellan’s fleet, which completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, 500 years ago in 2022. The 2nd photo is the memorial plaque in Seville Cathedral of the spot where the 18 sailors that formed the crew, from an initial 265 men who started the voyage, thanked Lord for their successful return. I remember being fascinated by Magellan’s and Victoria’s story, ever since in my childhood, my mother, who was a geography and history teacher, kept telling me about it, as a model of curiosity and purpose. Now I was, at last, the closest to those fabulous stories. #sevillestudytrip #magellan #victoriaship #seville #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

Early Art Deco in Brasov/ Kronstadt, seen in the design of a door, which reminds me of the Dutch Expressionism rather than Art Deco. It is quite a rare occurrence in this part of Europe. #artdeco #expressionism #dutchexpressionism #door #brasov #kronstadt #saxontransylvania #transylvania #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmamdache

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Contact Valentin Mandache: telephone 0040 728 323 272, v.mandache@gmail.com

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