Cover
Sewn paperback, jacket
Edition
2017, Romanian/English, 23 x 22 cm, 192 pp., 158 ills.
Series
Architecture Book Series
ISBN 978-973-0-25382-5
Editors
Alina Șerban, Irina Tulbure
Texts
Laura Popa‑Florea, Puiu Lăţea, Alex Răuţă, Irina Tulbure, Alina Şerban
Artist Inserts
studioBASAR, Matei Bejenaru, Nicu Ilfoveanu
Design
Radu Manelici
The Factory of Facts and Other (Unspoken) Stories investigates the condition of the post-socialist city in Romania by recording the contemporary life of the architectural objects usually associated, due to their representativity and public role, with the pre-December 1989 civic centres. Reflecting on how current social practices reintegrate into the daily flow or, on the contrary, reject from the urban space these iconic objects constructed under the modernising impulse of the socialist project, the book amounted to an exercise in exploring a potential path for mapping the traces left by these city witnesses. The perceptive model invoked led to the examination, via specific case studies, of a set of current social practices and interventions persisting in the structure of the former (current) civic centres and to the juxtaposition of different versions, either personal or collective, of contemplation and remembrance of the meanings acquired over the course of time by certain places, routes, pavements, parks, monuments integrated into civic centres or by certain buildings, generally included in the identity of the socialist city, such as the house of culture or the universal store.
Publication supported by: Romanian Order of Architects, from the Architectural Stamp Duty, Romanian Union of Architects, OAR Timiș
