Reflections series # 2

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Nov 082009
 

Versiune în română

First of all my apologies if you tried to access Bucharest Daily Photo in the morning. I’m hosting the website on a server at home and this morning we had a power outage for three hours. I hope this won’t happen too often. I have a UPS but it’s a small one and can only sustain the server for 40 minutes. Most times that’s enough but this time it wasn’t.

Back to today’s photograph. I like reflections photographs and I like to try my hand at shooting reflections every time I find some shiny surface and something nice that reflects on it. So in today’s photo you can see one of my attempts, the tower of the Bucharest Financial Plaza reflecting on the surface of the river Dâmboviţa.

Bucharest at night Part 3

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Oct 252009
 

Versiune în română

The series with Bucharest’s night shots continues with a photo of two banks: in the foreground we see the Romanian Commercial Bank, the largest bank in Romania, and in the background the National Bank of Romania, which is the the central bank of the country, the one that controls the exchange and the interest rates, supervises the credit institutions and issues the local currency, banknotes and coins.

Reflections

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Oct 222009
 

Versiune în română

In today’s picture we have the Unirea Shopping Center that I mentioned in my yesterday’s post. It was built in 1977, during the communist regime. I tried to remember when was the last time that I saw the facade of this building but I can’t remember. What I can tell you is that for a long time it’s been covered by these huge advertisement panels. And since we have no choice but to cope with this visual pollution, I thought I’ll have some fun with it and took these reflection photos. The building is reflecting in the fountains that I also mentioned yesterday, which as you can see are in dire need of a cleaning.

The National Theatre

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Oct 142009
 

Versiune în română

The theatre season has started in Bucharest. I love the theatre, it’s one of my favourite type of performing arts. That’s maybe because my mother used to take me to the theatre every week, when I was little. For me, the sadness of seeing summer departing is a bit alleviated by the start of the theatre season. In today’s photo we have one of the theatre venues of Bucharest, the National Theatre, a stocky building located in December 21st 1989 Square. It was built in 1973 after plans by a group of Romanian architects. The old building of the National Theater was destroyed during the WWII and that site is now occupied by a hotel. Originally the building had a different facade, but in 1984 it was remodeled and got its present massive shape. The theatre has four performance halls.

The National Theater is named after the Romanian playwright and short-story writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912). His plays made fun of the politics and politicians and of the Romanian society of that day. For example the play that is considered to be his masterpiece, “A Lost Letter”, written in 1884, describes a provincial government election won by a blackmailer. It’s amazing how his works have the same power today as they did a century ago. Not only that, but I saw one of his plays being performed in California and I was surprized to see how the American public of today can relate to his story written in 1880.

The inner courtyard of Dacia Palace

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Oct 112009
 

Versiune în română

To be honest I didn’t know the place in today’s photo existed until a few weeks ago. I must have passed the entrance to this inner courtyard a thousand times but it never crossed my mind to take the few steps through the entrance passageway. But last time I passed this building I stopped to take a picture of the marble plaque that identifies the building as “the house where the poet Mihai Eminescu (who is considered Romania’s greatest poet) worked as an editor to the newspaper The Time between the years 1877 – 1879″ and decided to see what’s behind the narrow passage to the right of the plaque. What I found was this nice inner courtyard, with a fountain and a bronze statue. The building that forms the inner courtyard used to belong to the Dacia Insurance Company and it was built in 1874.

Victory Road at night – Part 4

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Oct 102009
 

Versiune în română

Continuing the nightly stroll on Victory Road, here’s a shot of the Romanian Savings Bank, which I already introduced a few days ago with this post. Designed in eclectic style by the French architect Paul Gottereau and raised between the years 1896-1900, this was the only bank that was allowed to do business during communism when it served as the state savings bank called “CEC” (“Casa de Economii şi Consemnaţiuni” in Romanian) where people used to keep their savings. After the 1990 Revolution, when other banks were allowed to open offices in Romania, the CEC lost many of its customers. The bank was privatized and now it’s called “CEC Bank”. I’ve read in the newspaper that the building is set to become a museum but at this moment is still used as a bank.

Victory Road at night – Part 1
Victory Road at night – Part 2
Victory Road at night – Part 3

Bucharest’s between the wars architecture Part 3

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Oct 092009
 

Versiune în română

I’ve already posted two examples (one and two) of Bucharest’s between the wars architecture. At that time the city was enjoying economic prosperity and new architectural ideas, like modernist and Art-Deco styles, were being promoted. Here are two more examples (in one photo) of Bucharest’s 1930s architecture; and this time the buildings have been renovated. To the left we have Hotel Stănescu (or Negoiu) and to the right Hotel Union. They were built in 1929-1931 after a design by architect Arghir Culina. They served as hotels until 1990 (if I’m not mistaken) and today they function as business centers. They are located at the intersection between Ion Câmpineanu Street and Academiei.

More on the red dot and earthquakes

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Oct 052009
 

Versiune în română

I wrote yesterday about the red dot and I thought a good idea to post a close up of it. Like I said, it reads “This building has been appraised by technical expertise to fall within seismic risk class I” and this means high risk of collapse in case of an earthquake of magnitude 7 of higher on Richter scale. Many of the historical buildings of Bucharest were built before World War II and were never reinforced. Some of them don’t have a foundation or have very shallow foundations and have already been through two major earthquakes (the one in 1977 and another one in 1940 of magnitude 7.7). After the 1977 earthquake, the government imposed tougher construction standards. Earthquake is always on the minds of citizens of Bucharest and people always ask if the building “has a dot” when looking for an apartment. Evidently, being marked with a red dot diminishes the value of a property and some owners will tell you that their house or apartment was wrongly labeled because of the city hall corruption and that for some reason someone wanted to lower the value of their property. But, conspiracy theory or not, who is willing to take the risk ? I’ve also heard of stories of owners who used influence on the authorities and succeeded in having the red dot removed. I don’t know if these urban legends are true or not, but my advice for those who wish to buy property in Bucharest is to bring an independent expert to do a technical evaluation.

The second photo is of the building with the red dot (on Lipscani Street).

Beware of the red dot

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Oct 042009
 

English version

Many first-class modernist and Art-Deco buildings were erected in Bucharest between 1920 and the beginning of the WWII. Among them, this cylindrical tower on Doamnei Street designed by architect H. Stern in 1935. You don’t get to see many buildings like this one and that is why I like it despite its shabby look and dire need for renovation. Unfortunately the red dot at the base of the building tells us that the tower is most likely doomed. The red dot reads “This building has been appraised by technical expertise to fall within seismic risk class I”. I don’t know if you are aware but Romania (especially its southern part) lies in an earthquake area. The last big earthquake was in 1977. It had a magnitude of 7.2 and it killed around 1600 people and about 35.000 buildings were damaged.The buildings appraised as class I present a major risk of collapse in case of an earthquake of magnitude 7 of higher on Richter scale. Since more than 30 years have passed since the last big one, people are whispering that there’s time for the next one. Every year some fortune teller predicts the day the next big earthquake will take place and many people living in buildings like the one in today’s photo take to the streets for the day “just in case”.

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