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Radu Tîrcă and Ștefania Hîrleață are students at University of Architecture and Urbanism 'Ion Mincu', Bucharest. At present, they lead their theoretical research on the subject of thermal towns and diploma projects in Govora Baths under the guidance of Stefan Simion, Irina Tulbure and Ilinca Paun Constantinescu. As students, they won second prize and best student project in a BeeBreeders international architecture competition - Mango Vynil Hub, third prize in a Zeppelin national competition - Prototip pentru comunitate, as well as other mentions in other competitions.
Is the Ideal City the echo of an Ideal Architecture?
The Ideal City, painting by Fra Carnevale
photo source: www.pixels.com
Ákos Moravánszky
The Ideal City, as it presents itself in many of its representations – is the echo of an Ideal Architecture. I would even say: it is the Ideal Architecture itself, since the images that we connect with the ideal city lack depth, lack most of the ingredients of the city: urban life, urban society, or economy. All we see is facades, or at most, the “conceived space” of the city, to use Henri Lefebvre’s term. This “still life” is conceived as an antithesis to the “real” city, perceived as chaotic and disorganized. The geometrical order of the Ideal City projects a harmony that in the real work don’t exist – it is the city of the architect. How about an Ideal City that would emerge from negotiating different, partly contradicting images, conveying the “ideals” of all the parties involved in urban life?
Ákos Moravánszky (born 26. November 1950 in Székesfehérvár, Hungary), is a Swiss-Hungarian architect, theorist, historian and Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Architectural Theory at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich. Moravánszky is regarded as one of the world's leading architecture historians of Central European architecture. He is especially well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture in Central Europe, and for his role in the development of a theory of materiality in architecture.
