Happy homes, good business
In Romania, we have among the lowest quality of housing in Europe, with an aged stock (66,6% out of the urban collective housing is built by the communist regime) that has almost entirely passed from state ownership to private ownership (98,2% of the apartments are privately owned) – thus making it quite difficult to rehabilitate the buildings.
Apartments are among the smallest in Europe (18,47sqm/person – compared to the European average of 34,31) and are mostly overcrowded (49,5% of the urban population lives in overcrowded apartments).
After the 90s, the real-estate market has gone wild, with almost no involvement from the state. In 2015 Romania had 29 000 social homes (out of a total stock of 4,7 million homes, with an urban population of 10.7 million).
The only state-run program for housing is the First Home campaign – where the state guarantees for the amount of 60 000 euros when a young family buys their first home. This has shaped investor’s strategies in the past 10 years.
Most investors build poorly and sell for a high profit rate. The average price for a square meter in Bucharest is 1260 euros at an average income of 525 euros/month. The demand for housing is, of course, much higher than the offer – considering that in the past 20 years the housing stock has grown only by 18% – and almost entirely out of private efforts.
In this context, along with the On Housing exhibition, we wish to start a debate about the present and the future of housing in Romania, bringing together architects with a vast experience in collective housing design (including social housing), investors, realtors and bank representatives. We aim to observe the evolution of this program from different perspectives, to understand the role of each stakeholder and to encourage the dialogue between all these relevant voices that shape our houses.
Program:
10:00-10:30 Registration, coffee
10:30-10:45 Introduction
Oana Simionescu, BETA coordinator, OAR Timiș
10:45-12:25 First panel
Ilka Ruby
Lucian Racovițan
Michael Obrist
12:25-12:40 Coffee break
12:40-13:40 Second panel
Ovidiu Șandor
John Doling
13:40-13:55 Coffee break
13:55-15:00 Round table
with all the speakers and Dorel Niță from imobiliare.ro
moderated by Oana Simionescu, Ilinca Păun Constantinescu (IDEILAGRAM,
Bucharest)
UPDATE: Check this link to see some photos from the event.
Ilka Ruby
Ilka Ruby is a Berlin-based publisher and curator on issues surrounding architecture and urbanism. She studied architecture at RWTH Aachen and TU Vienna. Together with her partner Andreas Ruby, she founded textbild, an office for architectural communication, and Ruby Press, a publishing house with a focus on architecture, art, and other cultural practices engaged in the production of space. Through Ruby Press, the two have produced award winning books such as “Reasons for Walling a House” (2012), “Building Brazil!” (2011), “City of God—Cidade de Deus!” (2013), “Architecture Reading Aid Ahmedabad” (2015), and “Housing Cairo” (2016). In addition to their intense publishing activities, they realised a number of curatorial projects, such as the video installation “Endless Bauhaus”, part of the Modell Bauhaus exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (2009); the exhibition “Druot, Lacaton & Vassal—Tour Bois le Prêtre” for the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt (2012); “Treasures in Disguise”, the Pavilion representing Montenegro at the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2014); “Never Demolish” for the Copenhagen Architecture Festival (2017); and “Together! The New Architecture of the Collective” (2017) at the Vitra Design Museum. Additionally, they have organized several international symposia on architecture and design, including the “Min to Max” symposium on affordable housing (2011). Ilka Ruby has taught at Cornell University, Berlin University of the Arts, and the Peter Behrens School of Architecture in Düsseldorf.
John Doling
John Doling is emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has researched and published widely in a number of related fields, principally housing markets and housing policy, in addition to population change and welfare systems. The main focus of attention has been on advanced industrialised countries in Europe, North America and the Asian Pacific Region. He has undertaken research and consultancy for a variety of organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, The Asia Development Bank, the UK government, research councils and foundations. Notable publications include: “Comparative Housing Policy: Government and Housing in Advanced Industrialized Countries”, Macmillan, 1997; (with M Elsinga) “Demographic Change and Housing Wealth, Homeowners, pensions, and asset-based welfare in Europe”, Springer, 2012; (with Ronald R) “Housing East Asia: Socioeconomic and demographic challenges”, Palgrave, 2014.
Lucian Racovițan
Lucian Racovițan is born in Romania. He graduated his Masters at the Cork University College in Ireland and currently lives and works in Denmark. In 2010, Lucian joined the BIG architecture office in Copenhagen and became responsible with a series of projects and competitions: Banque Libano Française (ongoing project. The building is the headquarters of the BLF Bank in the centre of Beirut city, on the Mediteranean Sea’s shore. It is a skyscraper with almost 17.000 m2 of offices above ground.), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (one of the biggest advertisement companies in Europe – it’s a competition for the new 69.000 m2 office HQ), The Natural History Museum in London (a project focused on revitalising and developing public space around London’s NHM, by adding various functions that are specific and indispensable for contemporary museums), Copenhagen Business School (a 60.000 m2 extension of the existing campus. The project is developed around a series of eliptical shaped buildings, positioned as a chess table, which reintroduce the human scale in the campus and create a series of interstitial spaces, thus solving the complexity of the existing routes).
In the forementioned projects, Lucian was responsible with contacting the clients, team and project management, design and architecture, as well as with the production of final presentation materials.
Michael Obrist
Michael Obrist (1972, Bolzano, Italy) is an architect and partner of feld72 architekten zt gmbh. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna and the School of Architecture of Portsmouth. He added a few semester studies in philosophy at the University of Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts (Seminar Peter Sloterdijk).
Since 2018 he is professor for housing and architectural design at the Technical University of Vienna. From 2013 to 2018 he was visiting professor for space&design_strategies at the University for the Arts Linz. From 2016 to 2018 he was lecturer on “theory of the city” at the department for urbanism at the Technical University Graz. 2015 and 2016 he was professor at the masterclass for Public Space at the Salzburg Summer Academy. 2015 he was Professor at the Architectural Association Visiting School Slovenia 2015. From 2003-2011 he was lecturer for “Conceptual Architectural Strategies” at the Technical University Vienna. Michael Obrist was leading workshops at the School of Architecture in Bergen (Norway, 2011) and the masterclass for architecture and urbanism at the Summer School at Bauhaus Dessau (2010), at the Summer School Fondazione Antonio Presti in Sicily (2012) and at the Summer School PIDA in Ischia (2012). He has held lectures in numerous universities and institutions worldwide. From 2017-2019 he is one of the 5 jury members of KOER – Art in Public Space Vienna.
Ovidiu Șandor
Investor from Timișoara, engaged in the real estate domain.
