The economical crisis is upon us. We all felt it and feel it continuously. In Romania, Cluj-Napoca to be more exact, people find more and more interesting things to do in this situation. There is a local newspaper, Clujeanul.ro which tells all sorts of stories from really stupid ones to some (a few) interesting ones. Sometimes I really do not know why I bother reading it… I guess because of those very few cases when it tells important news also, I just give it a glimpse now and then.
The other day I have discovered, that there is a new article-series going on, written by a local reporter (I guess he is a reporter… I am not sure). The series is called “insectarul arhitecturii clujene” (roughly translated the “bug-tracker of the architecture of Cluj-Napoca“). Since the articles are in Romanian, a brief description is I think required for anyone who does not understand the language (not sure if there are any):
The guy goes around in the city and takes photographs of houses he doesn’t like and writes long articles describing their “disturbing architecture”. He calls these buildings the terror of Cluj and keeps on yanking around why they have a bad design and all…
Click here to see the pictures of the houses he criticizes. Some have too many pillars, some too many spikes in their fences and some are just utterly ugly…
Now I may have a very bad taste in design, but I personally do not find these houses that disturbing. Surely they are not the best ones I have seen, but I do not feel that they are so bad… 😕 … I sometimes visit freshome.com to see interesting design ideas… well now, those are REALLY out of the ordinary and funky… and what do you know: people do not complain about it. Civilized people seem to recognize the art in something different, something out of the ordinary… Just to make things clear some of the editors of freshome are also Romanian so thankfully there is hope for us 🙂 .
I think this is the most important problem of some citizens in our country: they simply can not accept that not everything is the way YOU like it. I feel that these people tend to hold back any type of development in a country: after all, development means changing and change means difference. Maybe I am wrong and the guy is right… but then PLEASE: tell us how a house should look like? What are we ALLOWED and what are we not to do with our houses? I personally have not found anything about this issue and to tell the truth, I do not think that the guy really knows…
To the owners of those “horrid” houses: yes, the houses are not masterpieces, but be proud, YOU have achieved something (I do not care how), the reporter never did (and judging by his attitude he never will).
So: my question in the end is are the houses really that horrid? (Please respond, I am really curious 🙂 ).