Cover
Sewn paperback, jacket
Edition
2024 (second edition), 23 x 22 cm, 264 pp., 118 ills., Romanian/English
Series
Architecture Book Series
ISBN 978-606-94536-9-8
Book concept, editor
Alina Șerban
Associate editors
Sorin Istudor, Kalliopi Dimou
Texts
T. Elvan Altan, Irina Băncescu, Elke Beyer & Anke Hagemann, Adina Brădeanu, Claude Karnoouh, Olga Kazakova, Juliana Maxim, Carmen Popescu, Magda Predescu, Adelina Ștefan, Irina Tulbure, Ana Maria Zahariade
Artist Insert
Nicu Ilfoveanu
Design
Radu Manelici
This book provides a first critical survey of the extraordinary situation held by the Romanian Black Sea Coast project in the architectural practice of the 1960s and ’70s. The adoption of modernist principles and technologies in architecture, as well as of mass tourism practices on Romanian seaside can be viewed both as an expression of the postwar urbanisation and industrialisation processes and as a frame of negotiation of geopolitical factors, domestic economy and political interests. Suggesting that leisure architecture belongs to a whole publicity apparatus of representation of the socialist state, the book outlines the role of architecture as frame of enclosure and display of practices (either architectural, social and political). The assemblage of essays and photographs guides the reader through a transdisciplinary analysis of the modernity of the Romanian seaside, examining in a methodical and nuanced way the distinctive character of the development plan. Bringing into play new theoretical perspectives and documents in order to renegotiate the numerous and complex dimensions of leisure architecture, the term representation becomes this anthology’s “vanishing point.”
Publication supported by: Romanian Order of Architects, from the Architectural Stamp Duty, ERSTE Foundation, Graham Foundation, Romanian Union of Architects