Urbanism, architecture, design, travel, my city, your city, my house, your house ... When we travel, in our country, in foreign countries and then we want to share impressions, ah, I forgot, holidays ..., we tend to show only the most beautiful, unique, special. That is, to prove that the choice we made when we chose where to live, to prove that the choice we made when we chose a vacation destination, to prove that we made the best choices, that we did not we were fooled, that we were not wrong.
I have written many travel blogs, my vacations, and my country. I believe that if we want to be well understood by readers we must present the place where we live. Apart from that, we live in all corners of the world, places where most of us will never get to visit. For this reason, I believe that we must bring in front of our colleagues as much as possible from the country and the city/village where we live.
When we do this I think we are tempted to beautify things a bit or if not, then at least to show the most beautiful and ignore the ugly parts that exist everywhere in the world, in a greater or lesser amount.
When we present a country, a city, a place, we present first of all the nature and the landscapes, the relief and then the bigger or smaller cities, the villages, that is the specific architecture. We choose in this case the most attractive or representative achievements, constructions, and buildings. We want to brag about our place!
I have written many travel blogs and my main concern and emotion were to make a presentation too beautiful by ignoring the more unpleasant parts of the city, my country and to convince someone to travel because of me because he trusted in what I wrote and showed in my blog.
You've probably gotten bored of what I'm writing so far, and you think I've got the community wrong because now I think I'm in a community of travelers. No, I wasn't wrong and this long introduction was just to justify what I will show next, that is, something that is far from a special achievement and beautiful construction, a unique architecture for which it is worth a trip.
Everywhere there is an ugly, rotten, untidy part of the city that is hidden in travel guides. I am referring now to buildings, the beautiful buildings that make beautiful cities. Which are not all beautiful.
I will now refer to a building in Bucharest, Romania. A building that is very close to my house is in the middle of the park at the end of my street. Not more than 200 - 300 meters. The building of a summer theater.
To be more precise, I don't consider that this construction, maybe an architectural mistake, a copy of some ancient buildings, probably Greek. The architectural elements, referring to the pediment, to the columns are of Greek or Roman influence, I don't know anymore, I learned once ... but more than fifty years have passed since then, I don't consider this construction to be ugly.
Maybe for sentimental reasons, when I was a child I often went to shows in this theater, and in the eyes of a child, this construction was impressive.
Once again I say that for me it is not ugly but what I want to show and reproach is the fact that this building has been abandoned and has been degrading for decades.
Just looking at these photos and I feel my stomach hurt that something like this can happen. I need to make a brief history of this building to better understand its situation.
A short documentary confirmed to me that the building has neoclassical influences, but being built in the Stalinist era, 1953, "socialist in content and national in form", Stanilist architecture, imposed by the Soviet occupier "copy to parody the values of Greek antiquity Romanesque, creating a classicizing architecture, which often curls kitsch ".
The project was made by the Romanian architect Paul Emil Miclescu, a famous architect but who had to do as ordered by the communist leadership of the country. The construction was made without much care and with poor quality construction materials. Because of this, this theater deteriorated in less than fifty years while ancient models in Greece and Rome lasted thousands of years.
I discovered on this occasion that on the inside of the theater (summer theater with amphitheater and without a roof), on the pediment there is still the coat of arms of the socialist republic which was abolished in 1989. I think it's the only place in the country where there is such a thing.
The theater was built in 1953, as well as part of my neighborhood, for the World Youth Festival. This festival was in fact a youth festival in the communist countries that appeared after the Second World War, under the influence of the Soviet Union. It was the largest open-air theater in Romania, with an amphitheater that could accommodate over 2000 spectators. After this event, it functioned for about twenty years as a summer garden where concerts and film screenings were held. Slowly, slowly it was abandoned and degradation began.
I lived in this neighborhood, called New Bucharest, part of the 1960s, I was a child and I often went to this theater in the summer, with my parents or brought by the school. As I said, I thought it was an imposing and beautiful building. Then I went to other places but life often offers surprises and twenty years ago I moved again to my childhood neighborhood, very close to this theater. The moment I returned to the neighborhood I was shocked by the way I found the building. Let me show you how it is now ...
I walk through the park every day, either I want to get to the subway that takes me downtown, or I go for a walk and play with my granddaughter. Every time I look at the theater with the nostalgia of my childhood and its past glory.
I like to take a lot of photos. The photos I take in this park are always "full" of the Summer Theater!
I forgot to make a presentation of the building. In the central part, in front, there were locker rooms, warehouses, and a stage. An amphitheater with benches for two thousand seats. All around was a passageway, lined with columns that supported a roof, just for the corridor. Above the spectators, only the starry sky.
There have been many attempts at repairs and promises from politicians, especially those who ran for mayor, that this theater will be rehabilitated and returned to the neighborhood. So far they have only managed to make a fence to prevent the entry and production of even greater damage. I took advantage of the guards' inattention and went close to the stage, to see how it is inside, to show you how it looks from the inside.
A hole in the metal door let me see the room behind the outside stage.
So here were the actors and singers I saw from the amphitheater!
I continued my journey to the amphitheater where I had not stepped for more than fifty years. Here was a place of culture, even if a somewhat popular culture, quite precarious ... no respect for that!
Finally, I got to the stage! A heartbreak when I saw how everything looks now.
Vegetation won the battle and occupied the entire amphitheater. That makes me happy, at least to be green.
Here the old stairs and the escape corridor look like a theater setting. this is the image I liked the most. I think that at night, the directors and scenographers went to the other world gather to arrange the setting in the hope that at least the theater will rise again.
Moreover, ghosts can't do that either. But now we have a slightly more justified hope.
The mayor, who is a very determined Frenchwoman, promised to recondition the theater and bring it back to its original form. I believe her.
This was a short history of a building in Bucharest that I find difficult to define. From the perspective of the child I was, I miss the time when I went to summer shows, the night when it was cool. I don't want to be dominated by the nostalgia of the past, because it was not an easy time, even if the bad ones are forgotten in the end.
I believe that a renovation made with the help of young architects, with innovative ideas and some changes could reinvent this building that would change the appearance of the park. Until that happens, even the crows are reserved and check daily if the long-awaited work begins.
I have learned that many surprising things can happen even when you lose all hope. I hope that in these moments when it seems that no one thinks about this park with its theater, they are working somewhere and that one morning I will see the construction equipment and the scaffolding installed.
Until then, I enjoy the park, nature. The park is arranged on the site of a secular forest and several trees survived from the old forest called Codrii Vlasiei.
Because I remembered majestic trees, old trees and because architecture is important here, I remember a story that a friend, architect, told me.
This architect, Diaconu is his name, was hired by the state to deal with the purchase of land and a building for our country's embassy in a neighboring country. The same thing was done by a western architect for his country.
My friend chose an imposing villa but which had a small yard and an undeveloped garden, while the western architect chose a small house but with a large garden, full of centuries-old trees.
Diaconu asked his western colleague why he chose a small building and a large garden. The western architect replied that he could build a very big and imposing house in a year but a garden with those trees would have taken many decades until it is arranged!
This was one of the lessons learned by my architect friend from a much more experienced one.
We now have the garden and we are waiting for the building to be ... rebuilt!
I will ask my niece Ilinca to announce that it is over.
