The Rise and Fall of a Bucharest Neighbourhood – Cotroceni – and Willy Pragher’s Photographs as an Anamnetic Instrument
The Rise and Fall of a Bucharest Neighbourhood – Cotroceni – and Willy Pragher’s Photographs as an Anamnetic Instrument

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to depict the history of one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods of Bucharest, Cotroceni, following the stylistic evolutions of the architecture of buildings constructed during the interwar period and later, in the 1950s and 1960s. The Neo-Romanian domestic architecture is interwoven in this residential area with elements of pure modernism or of the Art Deco style, through the creations of important names in the domain: Horia Creangă, Haralambie Georgescu, Tiberiu Niga, Jean Văleanu and others. After the changing of the political regime, small-sized apartment buildings following the formula of cheap, semi-detached or terraced houses, appeared around the neighbourhood. The analysis will look at the faces of this neighbourhood and its changes of physiognomy, comparing today’s pictures with Willy Pragher’s photographs, taken in the first half of the last century.

• Details
• Contents