Valentin Mandache, architectural historian

Considerations on the built heritage of southeast Europe

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The 10 most popular Historic Houses of Romania articles in December 2011

01/01/201215/01/2012Valentin Mandache

Art Deco Building Interior Elements
Psychedelic-like Design Art Deco Doorway
Lilac leaf shaped Art Nouveau windows
CASOTA CONAC: a magnificent Romanian period property with a great potential
Travel writing: trip to Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum
Design elements of a Bucharest Art Deco house
The BATTLE SCAR PEDIGREE of Bucharest’s period buildings: relics of the 1989 Revolution
ALLEGORICAL SCULPTURES on the Building of Romania’s National Bank
ART DECO Bucharest building damaged through ignorance and avarice
Decorative tiles and stone from the Art Deco Era

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Architectural Heritage Architecture of Romania, Eastern Europe, Historic Houses of Romania, History, Identity, Romania, Romanian Architecture, South East Europe Leave a comment

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Chronicle of the architectural tour in Bellu Cemetery →

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Architectural Styles

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

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Traces of the WWII bombing raids over Bucharest: a direction indicator to the bomb shelter in the hallway of an apartment block (Cișmigiu area) and a DIY family bomb shelter in the garden of a house in Cazzavillan area. In the 1940s everyone bombed Bucharest, initially the Russians, then USAF and RAF, finishing with Luftwaffe in 1944. The war in Ukraine now being next door, these relics are constant reminders that places like Bucharest are highly exposed to this sort of upheavals. #bombing #bombshelter #bucharest #1940s #wwii #southeasteurope #balkans #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

The Mediterranean style had a fulminant development in Bucharest after the Great Depression until the WWII including, on the prosperity background generated by the massive oil exports of Romania and later becoming the main oil supplier for the Nazi Germany’s war machine. Its origins are in a quirky synthesis of the influence of the Hollywood movies and their actor celebrities’ residencies in California inspired from the Spanish colonial architecture (Mission style, etc), and the receptivity for those designs among the wealthy from Bucharest’s Jewish Sephardic community, reminding them of the old fatherland, from whose the fashion spread to the other Bucharesters. The Mediterranean, Hollywood origin, architecture phenomenon, is thus perhaps most ample in Europe in a place like Romania. #mediterranean #architecture #bucharest #1930s #balkans #southeasteurope #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

The colours of Ottoman Bucharest: it used to be a “calico” town until the Europeanisation process of the national era of the 1860s onwards, decorated in an exuberance of colours, typical of the empire of Istanbul, a fact mentioned in the writings of many foreign travellers. Reminders of that are now far and few between, except some weathered Wallachian style church walls, and some houses, such as this colour reconstruction form Victoria Sq area. #colour #housedecoration #bucharest #ottomanempire #ottomanbucharest #southeasteurope #balkans #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

The Roman and Mongol empires at their greatest extent. Here is a good cultural geography illustration of an articulation point between civilisations: the place where I am based, indicated by the green arrow, called now Romania, which is at the hinge between the two geohistorical areas. This situation on the ground can well be observed and charted through the history of the local architecture, where there are influences from all over Europe, Mediterranean, Middle East, Persia, India and further afield. I like the thought that once, what is now Romania and parts of Vietnam were encompassed within same polity, the Mongol Empire. #geohistory #geopolitics #casedeepoca #valentinmandache

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

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

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