ADNBA

“There is a risk that most of the housing ensembles in the periphery will become favelas in 10-20 years.”

The fever of smaller prices dictates finishing and building solutions and that impacts on quality; these are the major dangers threatening the real estate market at present, say Andrei Șerbescu and Adrian Untaru from ADNBA architectural office. Thus, in the city fringes where such ensembles have been extensively built lately, houses have begun to age faster and uglier than those built in the 1960s – 1980s.

The quality of collective housing in Romania is the theme of the BETA 2018 Architectural Biennial from Timișoara to be opened on September 28 for a month.

What are people looking for, as a rule, when choosing an apartment?
It’s hard to define something very specific. A consistent theme in our design process is flexibility, but the way we particularize or subdivide things depend very much on the required design theme and housing type we have in mind for that place. So, both the units and compartmentalization within the apartment differ and fluctuate. Certainly, such elements like generous light through panoramic windows towards the city, clearness and freedom of its layout required almost everywhere, and so are the insertions of as many as possible aspects in a privately owned dwellings.

We believe people are in search of individuality whenever they look for an apartment. So, we try to find alternatives to a certain standard type of quasi-identical unity set in a row in a corridor and repeated on all floors.

How did Romanians’ perception as to housing in the last 20 years change from what you’ve noticed?

Now, after 20 years, we think that a cycle has come to an end. We’ve experienced the totalitarian systematization of the 1960s-1970s; in the 1900s and early 2000 we wished to escape standardization by overcoming the particular and applying atypical solutions, larger areas, but it turned out there were standards we couldn’t afford; on the other hand, there was neither a motif nor an analysis drawn on which to set such new principles.

Since they weren’t any coherent and well-defined solutions, such new models proved chaotic, so we’ve gradually come back to standardization and the models which proved to be successful on the market.

Now, we think we need to find another way of getting rid of standardization and find instead one shaped according to the market conditions.

To which extent is there a real interaction between architect and beneficiary / dweller in Romania?

In the case of collective housing, developed by investors, communication between architect and final beneficiary or dweller is wanting; as a rule, the developer takes care of it all. Moreover, if it there is one, then it appears relatively late, when the design is over, and it always concerns personalization. We have recently noticed that some forms of contact have been created through social media platforms or online public communication platforms, which help regain this lost contact.

To what extent are builders ready to tailor their offer according to people’s needs?

If we talk about developers, we think that a pretty stable market is in place. They certainly have to cut out their offer according to people’s requirements. However, there aren’t very clearly structured needs yet. They are collected and interpreted by selling teams, and sometimes the output can be truncated or levelled, which involves the risk of arriving at an over-standardized and undifferentiated output. Some developers cannot take the chance of evading a certain pattern, and thus we end up with a surplus of similar products which can’t be individualized. There is a high demand of new housing in the country; they sell everything on the market, and then we produce whatever has been sold out; all along this oversimplified cycle, it is space quality and individuality that suffer.

How can the end-user be a more involved housing actor?

We think that end-user’s education and information could contribute a lot to his or her becoming an active actor. For most of us, a house is the most important lifetime investment. Maybe the media or NGOs in the field could set up some social platforms that might guide or evaluate housing by providing brochures that could help buyers make coherent and well-informed choices. A well-informed client can evaluate a house sustainability through time. Otherwise, his or her choice would be hasty.

We hope that in the future people will be more informed in matters of economy, which would result in higher quality residential developments.

What major dangers jeopardize the quality of housing in your opinion?

One of the greatest dangers might be the huge pressure on the building budget, where the price prevails and dictates the finishing quality and the building solutions to the detriment of quality. In the peripheral developments we’ve noticed that houses age faster and uglier than the built stock of the 1960s-1980s.

We run the risk of witnessing their transformation into favelas in 10 to 20 years; they could become neighborhoods where nobody wants to live. Thus, we may resume the answer to the previous question on the well-informed end-user. We hope for an educated ‘consumption’ that would lead to quality housing space, one in which we feel happy to live, look at and walk in.