Bucharest lacks those urban markets, the open public spaces dedicated to such shared ?functions? as meeting, negotiation and exchange. If there is really such thing as the Bucharest maidane ? with all their autochthonous connotation of residual spaces, which the Turkish original does not sustain ? then they exist right at the center of the city. The focus on edifices in the detriment of urban texture is still something we marvel at. The blind walls, for instance, are the secondary effect of such false attention paid to details against the whole. With the probable exception of the Piazza of the Palace Hall, which imposed some degree of control over the surrounding urban space (as a result of demolitions and additions, to the detriment of the former Royal Palace), the random presence of regulating principles elsewhere is rather indicative of some aborted future intentionthan of projects turned into actual reality. The Victoria Palace is what ever got to be built of the regular piazza designed by Duiliu Marcu. Today it looks like the central piece of the place; in the initial project, though, it was only one among a number of frontal buildings. (5)

            To maintain that this is an immediate effect of Istanbul?s ?non-modern? urbanism seems to me a dubious way of avoiding the crux of the matter: our own responsibility in the decisions we make about the city. The urban look of the city as we know it today is largely a post-Ottoman product. The residual spaces are a result of the clash between the (non-assimilated) post-Enlightenment urbanist model and the ?organic? reality of the town. The main routes of today?s city were sliced byboyar courts and only rarely retrace the lines of some antic or medieval urban structure. All eventual adjustments have tried to ?straighten?, ?regularize?, ?bring to a logical shape?, or?modernize? the town. The unabashed cut of the Victoria Socialismului (?Victory of Socialism?) Boulevard does not unite pre-existent points of the urban texture, but some brand-new points, around which a new town would have eventually organized itself. It is a clear illustration of this area of conflict between the ?texture? of the city and its aggressive submission to geometrical patterns. In close proximity to all these areas of conflict, a whole lot of derelict, empty spaces spring up ? all the ?junk space? that comes as a product of urbanistic violence.

Strangely enough, there are radical ways of engaging in a dialogue with the residual spaces born out of violence in the East-European post-modern city. As far as the Romanian architects are concerned, they appear not to be even interested inhaving a look at such proposals as that made by Lebbeus Woods for Sarajevo and Havana. For one can hardly conceive of a more striking resemblance than between the post-1989 Bucharest, particularly the area around the House of the Republic, and the post-civil war Sarajevo. This being the case, I take the ?radical construction? Lebbeus Woods proposed for Sarajevo as a painful lesson, yet one which we should bleed to learn. I try to imagine the ?Bucharest 2000? contest having to deal with such a proposal, and some ?meta-institute? playing down/up the House of the Republic, a taboo object at the time, thanks to Mr. Adrian Nastase.

            What architect Lebbeus Woods suggests in his projects is that we should not only assume, on a personal note, the drama of the violent destruction of the city ? both the drama and the city are ours ? but that we should continue, on a necessarily masochistic note, to learn and assume the truth. In other words, Woods would not try to repair, restore, and cover with crusts the wounds and scars of a city vandalized by the folly of its lords and the rapture of us ? fools and cowards who let them play with the space of our lives. On the contrary, he would exhibit them, and turn them into the main character of the urban space. Wherever there is a virus of destruction, he would let it run its course, both on the facades and in the spaces separated by the facades: the public and the private. The probable outcome would be some spatial mutants, but they are the offspring of our gestures, thereforewe should adopt them like we would a handicapped child who is not in the least to blame for its own failure, but who, by his mere hideous presence, will forever remind us of our inescapable guilt.