Beyond Norms. Non-standard dwellings in Communist Romania

Authors’ Comment

What do a (seemingly) interwar modernist apartment block on Elisabeta Boulevard, a narrow, vaulted house with a flower garden in Rahova, and the opulent official residence in Suceava designed by Nicolae and Maria Porumbescu have in common?
The fact that all contradict the logic of housing during the totalitarian regime — serial, uniform, and mass-produced.
Singular housing between 1945 and 1989 is very little known and much more diverse than we might imagine.
These are privately-owned homes belonging to engineers, doctors, and architects, residences of the privileged, small houses with their own yards, tourist accommodations, or simply one-of-a-kind apartment buildings in city centers.
Their stories reveal unsuspected continuities — architectural and cultural values that both describe and transcend the regime in which they were created.
We propose a book about drama, subversion, and courage, about individuality and solidarity, about architects and their clients, about privilege, exclusion, and working with minimal resources.
We journey through Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Craiova, Suceava, and the seaside.
Some examples are models in themselves: works by anonymous architects as well as masters of 20th-century architecture — the Porumbescu couple, Haralamb (Bubi) Georgescu, or Mircea and Cleopatra Alifanti.
The examples are documented through texts on architecture, history, and anthropology, along with new photographs, archival images, and redrawn plans.

Book details:
Dimensions: 185 x 270 mm
Number of pages: 224, in color
Hardcover