We are learning from the press that architect Anca Petrescu has reopened a legal action relation to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, set up within the House of Parliament. If it were only a matter of politics and economics, we wouldn’t even have mentioned this scandal. But the complaint also refers to professional and esthetical matters, accusing an aggression on the unitary nature of an architectural work.
Let us disregard the irony of an action accusing the current interventions on an operation that has been possible only as a result of terrifying destructions. Referring just to the work itself, only in theory, perhaps we should take sides with a colleague. We have always stated that a valuable architectural work should be respected, irrespective of the political context in which it has been produced. “Arhitectura” has been very involved in the campaign for the preservation of the monument in Park Carol, when an action for its demolition had been initiated.
Yet, the question is to what extent may the People’s House be taken for an intangible monument and, in fact, if this construction may be judged from the standpoint of a common architectural work. Let us ignore the widely shared opinion that, in fact, the actual author can no longer be consulted, as such person was comrade Nicolae Ceausescu himself. The truth is that it was a collective work, in which a huge number of architects were involved and it is impossible to deny certain well thought and well executed details. The result is as we know it, a gigantic monolith, surrounded by inexpugnable walls, a forbidden town. If we took this house for a part of the town, then the interventions would acquire a completely different justification. The town must be a living body, in which interventions, changes, replacements come as natural actions, and its freezing and complete protection cannot be justified except for exceptional constructions. In fact, I believe that even the fiercest admirers will not put on the same level the People’s House and Venice.
I am not one of those people who would like all this construction to disappear. Beyond its economic value, it is part of our history. I believe though in a perversion, a fragmentation, in its gradual assimilation by the city. Its scale and unity will make it keep its features, even following operations one hundred times more significant than the shy interventions necessary to create the MNAC. My belief is that it is a lot worse to have all this huge territory isolated, like a private courtyard in a place that should be a public space. I even find it inadequate to have the House of Parliament located there, as well as its having left its traditional location. And I also find it loud, although the legal basis is probably unarguable, that the spaces meant to serve as the seat of the Senate – the seat of a fundamental, democratic institution, from the years 2000 – are also arranged by Mrs. Anca Petrescu, and precisely according to the same principles as those used to initiate them by Ceausescu.
