Exhibition explores people and buildings of Bucharest’s Romană Square

La Romană, an exhibition documenting the area around Bucharest’s Romană Square and the six landmark buildings that have shaped the life of the neighborhood from 1980 to the present, will be on view at Bucharest Architecture Forum (BAF) next month.

The exhibition does not attempt to reconstruct an official history of Romană Square. Instead, it brings together diverse perspectives and repositions them within the clear framework of the buildings and the street, the organizers, HopDocs Association, explain. “Architectural details, microhistories, subcultures, sounds, archival photographs, and personal testimonies converge in a living archive of a place that continues to exist and evolve.” The six buildings covered are Casata, Grădinița, Nottara, Eva, Studio, and Leonida.

“The project has a twofold focus: how we leave our mark on the spaces we inhabit and how those spaces shape us in return. How layers of memory accumulate over time, how space becomes embedded in our collective and individual memories, and in what form we continue to carry with us the places we have experienced,” exhibition curator Ilinca Micu explains.

Andreea Cel Mare conducted the architectural research into the six landmark buildings, while Gruia Bădescu, an urban designer and researcher at the University of Konstanz, carried out the urban and architectural history research into the evolution of Romană Square.

“Romană Square can thus be read as a palimpsest of Bucharest’s successive modernities. The boulevard urbanism of the late 19th century, the interwar metropolis, the socialist city, and post-socialist commercialization coexist in the same space,” Gruia Bădescu added.

Paul Breazu conducted the research into the urban subcultures and audio cassette trade that animated the area in the 1990s, while Paula Dunker documents the microhistories within the buildings, focusing on the Eva building, where she lived for 10 years.

Oana Iacob exploreed the layers superimposed on the buildings and the street, including advertisements, banners, street lighting, traffic, and noise, and their impact on the built environment over the decades. The sound documentation was produced by Dan Adrian Ionescu.

The exhibition also includes archival photographs by Norihiro Haruta and Andrei Bîrsan, as well as materials from the Agerpres and Getty Images archives.

The exhibition can be visited from October 1 to October 14.