The veteran. On the art and science of survival with the Medicine Faculty in Bucharest
The veteran. On the art and science of survival with the Medicine Faculty in Bucharest

Summary/Abstract: Often enjoying a longer life than human beings, buildings are opposing more and even more intense critical moments. Natural catastrophes are joined by anthropogenic ones and the inevitable deterioration is accompanied by the damage made by man. Major events, such as earthquakes or wars, alternate with by far less dramatic situations that are followed however by effects much more serious. And those edifices that manage to withstand all these types of aggression owe their subsistence to the same feature that also ensures the endurance of living creatures – the capacity to adapt. Seen from this angle, the first (and culturally main) headquarters of the current Carol Davila Medicine and Pharmacy University in Bucharest proves to be a telling demonstration of what an initial high quality concept means, one able to sustain the perpetuation process of its identity despite two world wars, two major earthquakes, as well as a continuous series of interventions that were well meant but not seldom undermined by various factors. The sacrifices made – nothing but the price paid for surviving – offer an outstanding occasion for repeated reflection on the manoeuvre margin for changes that the cultural resource can bear, a manoeuvre margin the present is beholden to define as precisely as possible.

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