The space arrangement of the traditional dwelling ? function of entrance (public/private); light/darkness and cardinal points; warmth/coldness; pure/impure ? is endowed with a greater degree of generality and, therefore, of stability (suggested by the positioning towards extremities of that which is not alike, during the khoric sifting in Timaios, for instance). What today we call a passive system of energy conservation or, in more sophisticated terms, ecotecture, is simply the purely common-sensical placing of the barely used spaces or of those only punctually needed (storage, stairs, bathrooms, kitchens) towards the north in order to ensure light for those spaces of frequent use, the dwelling space proper.

            The poor, restrictive schemes of functionalism undermine this common sense that is intrinsic to any dwelling. I myself live in a flat that is, to my mind, the best example I know of the complete failure of functionalism in its Romanian understanding. The entire block is an oblong razor blade (not as long, though, as the OD blocks of Drumul Taberei in the ?70s), defying thus any elementary rule of anti-seismic design. The stair-case lacks light and air circulation, so that it can host four crammed flats on the same floor; the problem is that the litter bin is accessed from the same stair-case hall and is equally unventilated and so narrow that you cannot use litter bags. The mixed structure of diaphragms and pillars follows a pattern that is beyond my comprehension: the big openings are in the pillars, while those linking the bedrooms are in the diaphragms. Almost any attempt to change the space disposition function of the dweller?s needs is thus baffled. The entire flat is oriented towards the north and obeys a strict day/night functional repartition. Yet, monsieur the architect decided that the flat was to be accessed through the very middle of the night area and that, in order to reach the living, you had to cross the whole range of the other rooms. Obviously, I had to transform it into a place I could live in, if not into a fully logical space: the bedroom opposite to the entrance became a guest room/living. I had the hall ?pierced? to allow two joint doors that could thus isolate one room and its bathroom on the right of the entrance and, on the left, a two-room suit. If the diaphragms had not separated the kitchen from the living and the bedroom and then bedrooms among themselves, the possibilities of indoor re-organization would have been greater. It would have been fairly easy to plan the space of the flat so as to allow future developments by various types of partitioning. But this surely was not the concern of the architect who designed it. I feel more than entitled to call my trade fellow a complete blockhead.

Case study: neighborhood center or Disneyland?

            At the time of its construction, the Drumul Taberei neighborhood represented a civilized example of the way the urbanistic principles of the Chart in Athens could be put into practice. Collective dwellings scattered around, commercial centers in isolated groups, alleys freely undulating amid the blocks that varied in shape and height. Also, the neighborhood was built on the outskirts of the city, so that it spared older constructions that would have been otherwise destroyed in the process. Eventually, the communist regime had more and more blocks built, so that the verdure spots were done away with, the tenants? intimacy intruded upon, the various networks over-solicited and the traffic annoyingly jammed. To reach the center from this area is still an irksome thing to do. Improvised market places popped up where the need was felt, in mockery to the architects and urbanists from thirty years ago.