Together but alone, in the type- apartment building block [and in its surrounding spaces]

Project description

In the context of socialist realism, architecture becomes, like any other form of art, another instrument of dictatorship, a continuous deception of its users. Housing development is one of the priorities of the Communist Party’s agenda, as part of the continuous progress rhetoric, which the totalitarian rulers envisioned for the Romanian society. Between the years 1959-1989, the dwellings had to be designed taking into account the best possible economic efficiency and, also the Party’s ideals, which underlined the necessity of equality amongst all. Thus, the type-apartment – building is born. Mei The tortured body of Bucharest, as Roan Barris defines the experience of the city facing the effects of the Communist regime, still shelters the traumatic experiences of residents living in individual houses, who were forced to move and tried to fit their new lives in the typified building blocks, after the demolition of entire neighbourhoods. Because humans are tribal creatures, they still tried to form new communities, develop new connections, but the new architectural frame, in which they were pushed in, didn’t provide the best support for these actions. How can small architectural and social interventions help heal the (Bucharest) residents’ trauma? As a case study, the article will also present the analysis of the first two phases of the Type-apartment building blocks’ Diaries, a project which encourages the development of alternative ways of investigating, analyzing and building architecture, by reconsidering the hierarchical relationship between the architect and the user of space.