Books

The Studio Zona Association launches the book of the historian Andrei Razvan Voinea, The Ideal of Bucharest: the family with the house and the garden. The Communal Societies plots for cheaper housing - Bucharest (1908 - 1948). The book is the first in the series dedicated to urban history and is based on the author’s PhD thesis, sustained in 2017 at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture. The study investigates the activity of the Cheap Housing Society and the ideal that governed a generation of physicians, politicians, engineers and architects: living in a home surrounded by the garden at an affordable price. This ideal proved to be impossible to put into practice in a Bucharest dominated by tuberculosis, inequality and lack of social rights, away from romantic narratives published after 1989. Between 2015 and 2018, Studio Zona Association led a civic awareness initiative of the history of each of the 25 housing-type plots developed by the Society by drafting and distributing flyers to each family living in over 4,000 dwellings built between 1908 and 1948. The occupants of the plots are invited to the event.

The launch shall take place on Monday, March 4th, 2019, from 7.00 p.m. at the Bucharest National Theatre, the Media Hall Foyer. The book can be purchased at the price of 15 RON, being subsidized by the Architectural Stamp.

Razvan Voinea (born 1985 - Campina) is a graduate of the Faculty of History (2008), of the Master of British Cultural Studies (Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​and Literatures, 2010), both at Bucharest University and the Central- European University of Central Europe (Budapest, 2012). Holder of a PhD in Architecture History (UAUIM, 2017). Scholar of the Romanian Academy (2014-2015) and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh (2016-2017).

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu