Facade details of buildings of the Modern Movement: Bucharest (ARO building, architect Horia Creanga, photo in December 2002) and Vienna (Zacherl house, architect Joze Plecnik, photo in April 2005)

Hello Maria, I like the "compare and contrast" motif in your most recent posts.

From a photographic stand point, I wish the lines from the two buildings had been at a much more obtuse angle, or parallel. The ratio of one building to the next is possibly not the best, but there is enough to see the nature of both. The top building looks like the kind of faceless utilitarian concrete structures I dislike the most, whereas the lower one has been designed with some degree of style in mind.

Nice observation and thinking, so very good work.

Best wishes. Peter

Hi Peter,

thanks for the comment.

Well, the pictures being taken at some years' distance, it was hard to get the angle agree ... But in other cases I was more lucky (in the Budapest photos).

As about the upper building being of the kind you dislike most - hmmm ... obviously I have no chance to put a Bucharest photo which is liked (none is most rated). The building above is usually quoted as "the manifest of Modernism", the architect of it considered the best Romanian architect ever ... But I agree the building above was from 1929, and the one bellow ~1905, but I thought that given the general delay between West and East they broadly fall under the same Movement (the Modern Movement). Though, indeed, the lower one may have Secession influences.

Indeed, the principles of the Modern Movement were taken and applied large scale after WWII, and mass production leaded in this case to lowering of quality. The difference is, that in Bucharest they were built in the city centre on the usual irregular parcels, and leaded to a special kind of contextual architecture I only know in few places of.

I haven't uploaded any other Romanian Modernism buildings (yet), cos I am anyway running out of photos of them for my scientific article. I needed for example 4 times so far photos of the ARO building, and I think I don't have more than 7 different ...

kind regards and thanks for commenting

Maria

Some buildings the language of which is architecturally related were

known to me from literature during my studies. But some others occured

to me while taking photos. While interferences between the Secession

in Austria and Hungary are expected, related language in Bucharest in

Vienna was more surprising.

The facade in the top part belongs to the building deemed to the

Modernism Manifest in Bucharest, Romania. The one on the bottom to a

well-known building of Secession in Vienna, built some 30 years

earlier. There is, of course, some evolution of the language, but the

way the verticality is emphasised, and the play of full and empty,

that is, of windows and walls, I find strongly related.

I have already got a comment regarding this, but would love to read more.

Many thanks

Maria