Architecture

Architecture

This photograph shows a façade like many others in Piatra-Neamț, only partly renovated. In this case, pragmatic solutions aimed at increasing energy efficiency or at merely preventing further degradation have aesthetic consequences that inhabitants did not consciously reflect upon. It is tempting to interpret the two sides of the same façade as a symbolic manifestation of social inequality or lack of cohesion, but when looking at the building as a whole, it becomes clear that the entire building has gone through multiple transformations.

I collaborated with Adela Iacoban, who became a consultant for my research project from an architectural perspective, and has made six sets of architectural drawings. These façades were painstakingly constructed by Adela by following a close observation on the basis of my photographs. Our aim was to contrast the initial façade of the building, when built, with the current one, following six case studies, of buildings made of different materials, and with different setups. Together, we analysed the ways in which inhabitants had appropriated their living spaces, making adjustments that had an effect on the building as a whole. 

Architectural drawings are a good way to look at the process of change. Apart from conscious additions to the building, such as insulation or windows, the drawings point to a much subtler change: degradation. The building is thus a complicated palimpsest: “something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form” (Oxford English Dictionary). It is a “site of growth and transformation” that must be considered holistically: instead of a ‘social life of things’, a ‘social life of materials’ in interaction with weather, people, animals, plants (Ingold 2012). In my work, I draw attention to mutations that take place over time, according to inhabitants’ needs to retain more heat in their apartments, to secure larger storage spaces or to simply show their neighbours that they are hardworking and “gospodar”. 

If one contrasts the two architectural drawings (illustrating its conception in 1978 vs. its state in 2015), the colourful thermal insulation is the most visible of changes, but there is much more to that, from the modification of windows and the closing of balconies, to the creation of attics and the addition of doors at ground floors. Since the energy crisis of 1973, buildings have been made more airtight and better insulated to save on energy costs (Wilhite, 2005; Wilk, 2009). At the same time, keeping the warm air inside also means keeping in all the moisture that humans, kitchens and bathrooms constantly exhale.

The ecologist and architecture theoretician Steward Brand, in his excellent book How Buildings Learn (Brand, 1994), points out that water vapour can penetrate everywhere in search for a cool surface to condense on. When it gets into a wall and condenses there, it soaks insulation, corrodes everything metal and flows down to the floor plate to rot the building’s basic structure — all hidden from view (Brand, 1994, p. 114). In the case of Piatra-Neamț, this invisible degradation is accelerated by the addition of the visible thermal insulation, imposed by EU regulations of energy saving. Hence, my data points towards a complex process of long-term change, in which the boundaries of the blocks of flats are constantly negotiated.