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Metal Doors
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Using the means of a typological study, the project documents the formal variation of the metal doors of the blocks of flats in Bucharest, Romania. By 2015, most of the old doors will be replaced with prefabricated aluminum frames, as the buildings are rehabilitated during a restoration project run by the City Hall.
The first layer of documentation regards the professional designs of Modernist inspiration, produced by local architects for the collective housing units beginning with the late 1960s.
The second layer of documentation is concerned with the wild formal diversity of the metal ornaments produced by local welders. These started to make their appearance at the end of the 1970s. This vernacular layer of intervention on Modernist designs was caused by functional concerns. Welders were called in by building dwellers, who were trying to protect the large panels of glass from being broken by the young, while playing.
For decades, the resulting combination of rough concrete walls, cheap metal paint, variations of welded iron and urban vegetation constituted a large part of the habitat of the city of Bucharest, where 70 % of the population lives in collective housing units.
However, in the eyes of the local administration and of the citizens alike, the old metal doors are a living link to the Communist past, either in terms of design, or in terms of poverty. They are now being replaced with standardized aluminum carpentry, which constitutes the third layer of documentation.
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