Brașov Transylvania
Time flies and it’s already been a year that I travelled to Brașov, for a workshop of the URBACT LINKS network.
For those who are interested in urban governance matters related to the preservation and management of historic city centres, the full report can be downloaded here. For the less professional readers here are a couple of pictures I took during the site visits in this beautiful town in Transylvania.
The town was not in best shape due to the cold winter and melting snow. As usual my pictures are very unprofessional streetviews, but hopefully able to capture some distinctive features of the place.
The proximity to a beautiful natural environment, the nearby ski resorts and the impressive routes upon the mountains are the main touristic attractions of the city. However the mix of rural architecture with valuable heritage buildings in Gothic, Neoclassis, Jugenstil, Baroque, Empire, but also with solid examples of modernist socialist architecture makes every walk through in town a discovery of surprising spots.
A sequence of high value eclectic buildings is placed along the main pedestrian street: some of them renovated, others badly in need of renovation. How to find a way to bring them back to life was among the topics in discussion in our workshop and some concern for the municipality in current times of scarcity. The difficult interaction of historic buildings and current use is made evident by advertisement outside and inside the compact city center. Some interventions are so unreasonable you may even like them.
The main square, renovated during the last period under Ceausescu in west European early post modernist style. The storefronts remind some early works of Hans Hollein in Vienna, not bad at all if retailers had some more sensitiveness with their signage…
Well Designed and Built 