Tudor Elian | "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism (original) (raw)
Papers by Tudor Elian
Dincolo de norme Locuințe singulare în România comunistă / Beyond Norms. Non-standard dwellings in Communist Romania, 2024
ELIAN, Tudor, „Povestea unui radicalism uitat. Transformare și rezistență / A Tale of Forgotten R... more ELIAN, Tudor, „Povestea unui radicalism uitat. Transformare și rezistență / A Tale of Forgotten Radicalism. Transformation and Resistance.”
in TULBURE, Irina și GHENCIULESCU, Ștefan (ed.), Dincolo de norme / Beyond norms, Zeppelin, Bucharest, 2024, pp.122-133
(ISBN 978-973-0-41107-2)
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2018
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2015
Contemporary urban phenomena such as shrinking, sprawling, social and economic inequalities and c... more Contemporary urban phenomena such as shrinking, sprawling, social and economic inequalities and civic unrest seem to have placed urbanism under the sign of helplessness even while it covets a position of control and power. Such matters challenge the universal and generic visions, projects and tools that shape urban design professions, while hinting at the need for establishing "a contemporary public and political platform for a renewed commitment to the city." 1 Increasingly elusive to planned urbanism-which struggles between the use of abstract tools, the implementation of somewhat utopian solutions and a more progressive theoretical line that fails to be absorbed by practice-the city and its issues are ever more real and tangible for citizens who have to cope with them in ever more creative ways. In the Balkans, social, economic and political constraints imposed on city-making processes in the communist and post-communist era have led urban planning and architecture to follow a local combination of "indiscriminate privatization and marketization; by losing their critical role in the city, they have lost the city as the constitutive subject and purpose of the profession." 2 Furthermore, "Dissatisfaction with the contemporary city has not led to the development of a credible alternative", asserted Rem Koolhaas in his essay 'Whatever Happened to Urbanism', "it has, on the contrary, inspired only more refined ways of articulating dissatisfaction. The profession persists in its fantasies, its ideology, its pretension, its illusions of involvement and control, and is therefore incapable of conceiving new modesties, partial interventions, strategic realignments, compromised positions that might influence, redirect, succeed in limited terms, regroup, begin from scratch even, but will never re-establish control." 3 Koolhaas suggests instead a "new urbanism" based on creating potential, possibilities and multiplicity, rather than one oriented towards producing order and omnipotence, new rules or limitations. Aimed at "the reinvention of psychological space" 4 rather than the permanence of the physical one, this approach establishes a keen interest for the existing city; seen not as artefact but as lived, spontaneous, informal and honest experience-the city of practices, relations and atmospheres. This brings to mind the urban exploration methods developed by Guy Debord and the French Situationist International in the 1950s: psychogeography, as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals" 5 , and the dérive, its preferred method of exploration, aimed at searching experiences and diverse ambiances risen from the interactions between unplanned urban practices and the planned city. 6 As the experienced city seems to unfold between the two,
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2014
Fifteen years ago, Sorin Alexandrescu published an article called “Overlapping Culture”1 where he... more Fifteen years ago, Sorin Alexandrescu published an article called “Overlapping Culture”1 where he separated Europe into centers (spaces of the avant-garde, generators of cultural models and original theories, carriers of waves…) and peripheries (spaces that synthesize several other spaces, receivers of cast waves often having little interest for theorizing received models). If we refer, in this context, to the emergence and coagulation of artistic and architectural modernism, past century Romania’s “provincial” position resembles a culture of overlapping and synthesis which tame outside influences while continuing local tradition; a young modern culture as creative as the models it refers to. Key characters of this Modernist-bearing synthesis are interwar architects like Horia Creangă, Marcel Janco and G.M. Cantacuzino or Henrietta Delavrancea-Gibory and Octav Doicescu, who continued their activity after the war, too, when the way to filter modernism became more obtuse and encoded. However, as the architecture of newer generations became more compelled to obey political impositions within a planned system, the independent movement of overlapping and models seems to disappear as a general formative characteristic. When it does exist, it is more likely a matter of individual opinion, foreign to the tide it stands against. A critical stand difficult to discern in the “adjusted” mass, yet one that, nonetheless, leaves traces.
Born in 1947, architect, urban planner, product designer, active in the fight for saving national heritage and just as active in the consolidation of the profession (president of major professional associations in Romania), Şerban Sturdza is, perhaps, the best example of an architect who, starting from the 1970s, has worked undeterred, first in Timişoara and then in Bucharest looking for a certain local synthesis. His projects are the result of a long and refined process of cultural assimilation and experience which manifests itself as inventiveness, fantasy and play, and equally as experiment and bricolage.
We will follow his relationship with modernity, modernism and artistic and local cultural architecture as they emerge from his designs.
2,14 tipuri de școli de arhitectură, 2016
Ultimii cinsprezece ani au însemnat o înflorire a numeroaselor şi variatelor forme de educaţie ar... more Ultimii cinsprezece ani au însemnat o înflorire
a numeroaselor şi variatelor forme de educaţie
arhitecturală alternativă în România: ateliere
teoretice, workshop‑uri aplicate, şcoli de vară
şi tabere de arhitectură ce formează astăzi
un întreg ecosistem de educaţie nonformală
dedicat studenţilor, aflat atât în afara
învăţământului superior de arhitectură, cât şi
a practicii profesionale.
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2014
The urban design practices of the past few decades have relied almost entirely on generic desires... more The urban design practices of the past few decades have relied almost entirely on generic desires, projects and tools. With the globalization of urban visions and behaviours, it seems that authentically local specificities persist and thrive sometimes more in those cities which still rely in one way or another on unplanned processes. Such is the case of most Bucharest city.
Both the concept of urbanity and the behaviour it infers towards the other, the collective and the city itself seem to compete with the type of local spontaneous urban practices specific to informal urbanism. Born from the need to cope with the (post)communist condition, these improvised, diverse and very lively practices seem to denote a divergent culture.
But are these spontaneous behaviours the only ways of coping with both the past and the present in the here and now? Or are they also the emerging signs of a new vernacular, of a new tradition that is, of a culture that shifts over time to result eventually in more coherent behaviours? Is the bricoleur – the main actor of this spontaneous city – introducing a local blend of urbanity and should this alternative path be repressed, ignored or included in the way we think of our cities today and in the future?
Book Reviews by Tudor Elian
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2018
Informality has exerted a longstanding and special fascination for architects. Throughout the las... more Informality has exerted a longstanding and special fascination for architects. Throughout the last hundred years, the unplanned or un-designed has been interpreted as morphological reference, as place of necessary action and as the architectural "other," that is, as instance of alternative urbanities and everyday practices, which might put the profession into crisis and stimulate new conceptual horizons. Over the past two decades, a special interest coming from architectural practice and theory alike has coagulated around encounters between design and informal settlements. This has generated an "informal architecture" constituted of small-scale disciplinary means, or polite practices, as well as a series of converging discourses, questioning or trying to change the socio-political and professional landscape. These were produced most often in curated events and publications which concentrated varied directions, projects and processes, in an attempt to offer common identities and representations. Valeria Federighi's book proposes a very useful and necessary epistemological examination of such representations. The book is triggered by the scientific difficulty in approaching the relationship between architecture and informality, all the more disarming in an era of global flows and interwoven determinations.
Dincolo de norme Locuințe singulare în România comunistă / Beyond Norms. Non-standard dwellings in Communist Romania, 2024
ELIAN, Tudor, „Povestea unui radicalism uitat. Transformare și rezistență / A Tale of Forgotten R... more ELIAN, Tudor, „Povestea unui radicalism uitat. Transformare și rezistență / A Tale of Forgotten Radicalism. Transformation and Resistance.”
in TULBURE, Irina și GHENCIULESCU, Ștefan (ed.), Dincolo de norme / Beyond norms, Zeppelin, Bucharest, 2024, pp.122-133
(ISBN 978-973-0-41107-2)
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2018
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2015
Contemporary urban phenomena such as shrinking, sprawling, social and economic inequalities and c... more Contemporary urban phenomena such as shrinking, sprawling, social and economic inequalities and civic unrest seem to have placed urbanism under the sign of helplessness even while it covets a position of control and power. Such matters challenge the universal and generic visions, projects and tools that shape urban design professions, while hinting at the need for establishing "a contemporary public and political platform for a renewed commitment to the city." 1 Increasingly elusive to planned urbanism-which struggles between the use of abstract tools, the implementation of somewhat utopian solutions and a more progressive theoretical line that fails to be absorbed by practice-the city and its issues are ever more real and tangible for citizens who have to cope with them in ever more creative ways. In the Balkans, social, economic and political constraints imposed on city-making processes in the communist and post-communist era have led urban planning and architecture to follow a local combination of "indiscriminate privatization and marketization; by losing their critical role in the city, they have lost the city as the constitutive subject and purpose of the profession." 2 Furthermore, "Dissatisfaction with the contemporary city has not led to the development of a credible alternative", asserted Rem Koolhaas in his essay 'Whatever Happened to Urbanism', "it has, on the contrary, inspired only more refined ways of articulating dissatisfaction. The profession persists in its fantasies, its ideology, its pretension, its illusions of involvement and control, and is therefore incapable of conceiving new modesties, partial interventions, strategic realignments, compromised positions that might influence, redirect, succeed in limited terms, regroup, begin from scratch even, but will never re-establish control." 3 Koolhaas suggests instead a "new urbanism" based on creating potential, possibilities and multiplicity, rather than one oriented towards producing order and omnipotence, new rules or limitations. Aimed at "the reinvention of psychological space" 4 rather than the permanence of the physical one, this approach establishes a keen interest for the existing city; seen not as artefact but as lived, spontaneous, informal and honest experience-the city of practices, relations and atmospheres. This brings to mind the urban exploration methods developed by Guy Debord and the French Situationist International in the 1950s: psychogeography, as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals" 5 , and the dérive, its preferred method of exploration, aimed at searching experiences and diverse ambiances risen from the interactions between unplanned urban practices and the planned city. 6 As the experienced city seems to unfold between the two,
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2014
Fifteen years ago, Sorin Alexandrescu published an article called “Overlapping Culture”1 where he... more Fifteen years ago, Sorin Alexandrescu published an article called “Overlapping Culture”1 where he separated Europe into centers (spaces of the avant-garde, generators of cultural models and original theories, carriers of waves…) and peripheries (spaces that synthesize several other spaces, receivers of cast waves often having little interest for theorizing received models). If we refer, in this context, to the emergence and coagulation of artistic and architectural modernism, past century Romania’s “provincial” position resembles a culture of overlapping and synthesis which tame outside influences while continuing local tradition; a young modern culture as creative as the models it refers to. Key characters of this Modernist-bearing synthesis are interwar architects like Horia Creangă, Marcel Janco and G.M. Cantacuzino or Henrietta Delavrancea-Gibory and Octav Doicescu, who continued their activity after the war, too, when the way to filter modernism became more obtuse and encoded. However, as the architecture of newer generations became more compelled to obey political impositions within a planned system, the independent movement of overlapping and models seems to disappear as a general formative characteristic. When it does exist, it is more likely a matter of individual opinion, foreign to the tide it stands against. A critical stand difficult to discern in the “adjusted” mass, yet one that, nonetheless, leaves traces.
Born in 1947, architect, urban planner, product designer, active in the fight for saving national heritage and just as active in the consolidation of the profession (president of major professional associations in Romania), Şerban Sturdza is, perhaps, the best example of an architect who, starting from the 1970s, has worked undeterred, first in Timişoara and then in Bucharest looking for a certain local synthesis. His projects are the result of a long and refined process of cultural assimilation and experience which manifests itself as inventiveness, fantasy and play, and equally as experiment and bricolage.
We will follow his relationship with modernity, modernism and artistic and local cultural architecture as they emerge from his designs.
2,14 tipuri de școli de arhitectură, 2016
Ultimii cinsprezece ani au însemnat o înflorire a numeroaselor şi variatelor forme de educaţie ar... more Ultimii cinsprezece ani au însemnat o înflorire
a numeroaselor şi variatelor forme de educaţie
arhitecturală alternativă în România: ateliere
teoretice, workshop‑uri aplicate, şcoli de vară
şi tabere de arhitectură ce formează astăzi
un întreg ecosistem de educaţie nonformală
dedicat studenţilor, aflat atât în afara
învăţământului superior de arhitectură, cât şi
a practicii profesionale.
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2014
The urban design practices of the past few decades have relied almost entirely on generic desires... more The urban design practices of the past few decades have relied almost entirely on generic desires, projects and tools. With the globalization of urban visions and behaviours, it seems that authentically local specificities persist and thrive sometimes more in those cities which still rely in one way or another on unplanned processes. Such is the case of most Bucharest city.
Both the concept of urbanity and the behaviour it infers towards the other, the collective and the city itself seem to compete with the type of local spontaneous urban practices specific to informal urbanism. Born from the need to cope with the (post)communist condition, these improvised, diverse and very lively practices seem to denote a divergent culture.
But are these spontaneous behaviours the only ways of coping with both the past and the present in the here and now? Or are they also the emerging signs of a new vernacular, of a new tradition that is, of a culture that shifts over time to result eventually in more coherent behaviours? Is the bricoleur – the main actor of this spontaneous city – introducing a local blend of urbanity and should this alternative path be repressed, ignored or included in the way we think of our cities today and in the future?
Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2018
Informality has exerted a longstanding and special fascination for architects. Throughout the las... more Informality has exerted a longstanding and special fascination for architects. Throughout the last hundred years, the unplanned or un-designed has been interpreted as morphological reference, as place of necessary action and as the architectural "other," that is, as instance of alternative urbanities and everyday practices, which might put the profession into crisis and stimulate new conceptual horizons. Over the past two decades, a special interest coming from architectural practice and theory alike has coagulated around encounters between design and informal settlements. This has generated an "informal architecture" constituted of small-scale disciplinary means, or polite practices, as well as a series of converging discourses, questioning or trying to change the socio-political and professional landscape. These were produced most often in curated events and publications which concentrated varied directions, projects and processes, in an attempt to offer common identities and representations. Valeria Federighi's book proposes a very useful and necessary epistemological examination of such representations. The book is triggered by the scientific difficulty in approaching the relationship between architecture and informality, all the more disarming in an era of global flows and interwoven determinations.