Photo: Dragos Lumpan
I am an addict of the city and contemporary architecture, yet I never say no to quality traditional architecture. I have no doubt that the originality of vernacular architecture and the ethics of architecture could defy academic dryness if we didn’t chance to meet them on the hilltop. And since profound theoretical subjects are rare in today’s villages, I do not want to miss the opportunity of telling you something about a house from Balaban village, near Bran, a boarding house, in fact.
What is ethical in architecture? The answer is as simple as that: to build a handsome house. Moreover, authenticity is part of the ethical contract, when you realize that a house means the foundation of a world. If you follow the spirit of the place, then you take into account the trees and stones, the grass, sun and sky, and the beings that will dwell it. As Heidegger might say, you pay attention to gods and earth.
Unfortunately, whenever you want to find authenticity in the Romanian village and look for its beauty, you are on quicksand, because our new vernacular is separated from traditional architecture. Everywhere you see houses built in all sorts of techniques, with a cacophony of trivial materials and stylistic non-identities. They spread all over, from the mountain area to the seashore. It seems that no one ever pays attention to common facts like constructive tradition, proportions, materialness, and relation to the environment, etc.
There is nothing genuine in the new Romanian village, nothing connected to tradition and place. You can find that only in the village museums. What a pity! As to architecture, nobody repented for his/her sins, which are so enjoyable!
I would like to pick the house story again and tell few things about its history. Its owner was not born in Romania, and had no roots here, but he thought it right to build here a traditional house. In 1968, when he came to write an article about the Carpathians for National Geographic, he discovered this house in Magura over 35 years ago. He developed a real emotional attachment to the house. He looked for the house plans in Astra Museum from Sibiu, and found it there after several years. He demanded the two architects he worked with to be faithful to the original image. Attila Zakarias and Kazmer Kovacs succeeded to comply with the original and configured and adjusted the whole ensemble to the new function, while keeping with the spirit of the initial architecture.
Behind this construction you do not feel tourist scenery composed of details and colours or some farmer’s furniture and blankets but deeper things: a certain roofline and serenity of the volume adjusted to the landscape, the tension and balance between inside and outside generated by the interior courtyard, a certain sweetness of form given by wooden clapboarding, the small windows cutting out the surrounding nature and generous proportions.
Such a rare approach makes you brood over it. It is so simple to appeal to tradition, and there are but few who do it. So, I found that something crucial was lost to us and our recent history. It seems that at the grassroots we do not have the necessary instruments to build emotionally, since we have to appeal to museums, though its place should be in the village. The appeal to place memory does not work anymore, it is strange and far from us. It is not only the communist years and those of imposed systematization that erased the identity of villages and their houses. Moreover, it is these new materials and haste to efficiency that round up the whole picture. It is almost impossible to evade the entire chain. However, I do believe that things could be different, like in the house from Balaban village.
