I had the pleasant surprise while reading Prof. Constantin C. Giurescu’s latest book, to find myself cited on page 194. He mentions there details from an interview published last May in the newspaper Puterea, where I spoke about my activity as a period property consultant and the high level of education, skills and experience needed to work efficiently in that specialist field. For me it is a great honour that Prof Giurescu, the best contemporary Romanian historian, has considered necessary to include those points in his eminent book.
The volume is entitled “Arhitectura Bucurestilor- Incotro?” (“Bucharest’s Architecture – which way?”) and has been published at the end of 2010 by Vremea publishing house. Through his methodology, diversity of sources and direct style, the work represents a rarity within the Romanian publishing scene, inflated by books written in a mediocre fashion, going in circles and lacking method. Prof Giurescu thus mentions and analyses the grand and small scale abominations suffered by the historic built landscape of Bucharest in the last two decades, from the lunatic government decision more than a decade ago, to gift the magnificent old parliament building to the Romanian Orthodox Church, one of the institutions most active in defacing and destroying the historic edifices in its care, to the countless demolitions and ‘renovations’ performed by ignorant period property owners, who think themselves as absolute masters of their property, forgetting that they are also custodians of a heritage good belonging to the community.
I highly recommend this book to all those preoccupied by this singular phenomenon within the European Union of wholesale architectural heritage destruction performed ironically not by outsiders, but in most cases by the native citizens of this “European” city, EU’s 6th largest metropolis.
Valentin Mandache, architectural historian 