MĂNĂȘTUR: A SOCIALIST LEGACY

Vancea Daciana-Briana

Theory and Practice of Urbanism since 1945

prof. Bruno De Meulder

KUL NOND UITW Ingenieurswetenschappen

KULeuven 2021 – 2020

TABEL OF CONTENT

1. ABSTRACT
2. MĂNĂȘTUR AND THE CITY
3. MĂNĂȘTUR AS THE PERIPHERAL SPACE
4. MĂNĂȘTUR AS SOCIALIST URBANISTIC CONCEPT
5. THE AFTERMATHS OF THE SOCIALIST URBANISM
6. REFERENCES
ABSTRACT
Cluj-Napoca, as of the present moment, represents one, if not the most, important city of
Romania, apart from Bucharest, the capital. Its large size is due to the socialist developments:
entire neighbourhoods built in the `70 and `80 to assure housing for the serve population
growth and rural to urban migration, as a result of the development of the industrial zone. The
settlements that where once considered peripheral were incapsulated/embedded within the
city. At that political time, when Romania was under the socialist influence, the idea of
development was flourishing because it attracted a lot of middle-class people how wanted to
live in the city and to work in the industrial zone. Therefore, these villages transformed into
neighbourhoods, design by the socialist rules: high-rise prefabricated apartment buildings for
huge amounts people. The neighbourhoods were organised around a green space and a
neighbourhood centre. These interventions supported the city`s expansion to what is known
now as the core of Cluj-Napoca. The neighbourhood of Mănăștur, yet so far away for the railway
station and industrial zone, became the biggest size-wise and the densest district of Cluj-
Napoca. The project had a political side – reasons to build and consequences in design, but it
helped to fix the shortage in housing and to develop a green park dedicated to sports, along the
Someș River. Also, it created a transitional zone between the end of the city and its centre. After
almost 50 years from its start, with the world moving forward, Mănăștur, as many other socialist
neighbourhoods, seemed to have frozen at its peak: its establishment in the communist regime.
Is it now still valuable resource for the city as it used to be or has it become a burden that
people, who instead of fixing it, are just ignoring the elephant in the room?
1. MĂNĂȘTUR AND THE CITY

Fig. 1 – Map of Cluj-Napoca locating the socialist neighbourhoods and

Mănăștur in relationship with the main road and the industrial zone
(source: Pănescu, E. 2006)

Before the war, the turning point in the urban life of the city, Cluj-Napoca had different
important functions: administrative and cultural, both taking place in the old historical centre.
(Agachi, 2004). Development and industrialisation and strongly linked. From 1945-1960, the
years of reconstruction after the war, the demographic and territorial growth was slow. The
different dynamics of economic and social development changed from 1960 - 1989, due to the
high-speed socialist industrialization and urbanisation, that lead the city to experience an
unprecedented process of growth economically with the need of a physical response: a
territorial expansion. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989 until now, the territorial
growth is achieved through administrative and political measures. (Fig. 3) (Poledna, 2005)
The urban traffic is the one of the main factors of the complexity of the urban activity.
(Lăzărescu, 1977). Following main roads of the city – these roman cardo and decumanus - the
socialist program of housing development decided, in order to obtain a polycentric Cluj, to
select a few peripheral space and to propose masterplans for the future neighbourhoods. (Fig.
1, 2) Good transportation systems and efficient infrastructure represents one of the city’s urban
artefacts, as Kostoff Spiro defined it: an object creates to match the model in the creator’s mind.
The new created routes facilitate transportation and encourage the usage of the space,
elevating the neighbourhood and its form of an urban society - the city as an artefact. (Agachi,
2004)
 Fig. 2 – Scheme of the expansion of a polycentric
open city (source: Lăzărescu, 1977)
Fig. 3 –Graph related to demographic growth during the years (souce:Belozerov, 2010)

The districts were influenced by the concept of the microraion, a systematisation plan
based on the idea of a city on top of the city, borrowing a few characteristics, spatially
reorganising the society within the city. Every factory was awarded an apartment block for the
people working there, therefore, the neighbourhood and designed to accommodate the labour
force of the Heavy Machinery Combinates – the new wave of migration into the city.

While the systematisation plan that was not only applied in Cluj-Napoca, but at national
level, in the whole country – as a protype, this paper focuses on the case study of the densest
of ones in Cluj-Napoca: Mănăștur. The neighbourhood was designed, in different interventions
between the years 1965-1989, following a complex masterplan created after a competition in
1974, by a group of architects, from where Emanoil Tudose had the most implication. (Pănescu,
2016) Mănăștur is located far from the industrial zone, over what was once a Romanian village.
The ethnicity is an important factor when choosing the direction of expansion. With the
Hungarians occupying the city centre and the areas surrounding it, in a nationalist socialist
society, the open sites needed to be predominantly Romanian.

The neighbourhood was divided in 6 microraion: The first ensemble, the second
ensemble, (around 1960), Mănăștur I, Mănăștur II, (1973), Mănăștur Nord and Plopilor-Șesului
(1989) (Fig. 4). The concept of microraion started from the soviet schools of urbanism and
expended in Eastern Europe) that, amongst other ideas, focused on decentralization (creating
different interest points apart from the city centre e.g. a neighbourhood centre, a park).
Fig.4 –
Graph
related to

demographic growth during the years (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

2. MĂNĂȘTUR AS THE PERIPHERAL SPACE

 Fig. 5 – Localisation of Mănăștur village, map dating from 1975 (source: military map)
Fig. 6 – Fragment of Mănăștur Village, 1933 (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

Before the first acts of the imposed post-war urbanisation (1965) in the neighbourhood
that is now known as Mănăștur, there was a village, outside of the city ring of Cluj-Napoca where
people were practicing agriculture on small plots of land: long and narrow (Fig. 5). There was
not much attention paid to the infrastructure (Fig. 6). There was one important main road,
which passed thought the village to reach the city. The inhabitants were preoccupied with land
work and other forms of crafting as a mean of life. The social aspect of the village concentres
around one of the only gathering space available: the church on the Calvaria Hill (dating form
1095), a commune value that was very important for the peasants living there. (Agachi, 2004)

Due to the rapid development of the industry after the war, there was a need to have
more people working in the factories. The solution was a population migration from the villages
around Cluj-Napoca, that lead to an overurbanisation: a phenomenon very common to the
developing countries, where the rapid population growth is in direct relationship with the
working environment. (Polenda, 2005) It puts a lot of pressure on the rural communities who
are starting to lose their inhabitants. Although, for Mănăștur, neighbouring the city in the
process of expansion, it was not the case. The pressure came from another direction: the brutal
and violent change of the periphery’s heterotopia – the socialist systematic development
program.

Mănăștur, as many other villages and areas around Cluj (e.g., Mărăști, Zorilor,
Gheorgheni, Grigorescu) that are now part of the it, shifted, their position form a township, to
a centre-periphery, in a reduced period (from 1950-1989). If Mănăștur as a village had a certain
genius locis - very quiet, living the ordinary life; it was destroyed by the previously mentioned
interventions: these big and bizarre concrete monsters. Its “identity of the locus”, as Morales-
Sola said, was reduce “in the classic sense to zero”. There is a lack of the sense of the place.
 3. MĂNĂȘTUR AS A SOCIALIST URBANISTIC CONCEPT

Paul Claval said talking about the logic of the city that it is characterised by the diversity
of its forms of social living more than the coherence of the forms, meaning that the components
of the city as just a consumable product to be used. Its purpose is to serve the people living
there. The solution adapted by the administration was to created neighbourhoods organized by
zonification.

THE SOVIETIC APROACH – ZONING

Fig.7 – Scheme explaining the distribution of functions in general (source: Lăzărescu, 1977)
Fig.8 – Scheme explaining the distribution of functions in Grigorescu Neighbourhood (source: Lăzărescu, 1977)

It is called the soviet approach because it started with the soviet school of urbanism
when they proposed the idea of zoning. The neighbourhoods are divided in microraions which
are composed of residential buildings and other functions - enough to assure the social life (a
city inside of a city). People spend their time there and work in the industrial zone. The social
magnet is the neighbourhood centre - nucleus (the result the decentralization concept).
Having a masterplan that divides the areas into zone makes it easier for prioritization,
meaning that the buildings that are to be created first are the most necessary ones – as of this
case, the apartment blocks. Were the planners paying attention the different scales? The
answer is yes, they were, but the final product is a demand of the administration which founded
the production system. There were cases where the original design was not followed
completely, only the parts that were more economically convenient (e.g. the residential
building, the canalization of the Calvaria Creek, instead of creating the green line). This way, the
final product makes it look like the interventions used an intermediate scale – more like what a
concept is. They did not zoom out enough to see the influence on this city (especially on one
like Cluj-Napoca which has different height lines – and by proposing something so
homogeneous, they skipped the potential of creating diversity through terrain usage), or not
zoomed in enough to see how badly the sameness of the apartments are negative influencing
the people living there. This way, the complexity of the project is now its size, not the details
about it. If every microraion has the same characteristics (the building block aesthetic, the
common space - the back garden, the public spaces – the school, the market) and they are
replicated without alterations, that leads to a plain row of the same image. (Fig. 7, Fig. 8)
 Fig. 9 -Scheme explaining the distribution of functions in Mănăștur II (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

The street is the reference point when talking about the zone. By creating the main
artery, not only they have created a connection within the region that now crosses the city but
divided the neighbourhoods into zone as well. The streets are highlighted, in this mindset, in a
very modernist and hygienic way: having high rise buildings (around 10 story) surrounding them.
This is in fact a tactical mauver that assures at the same time the affordable accommodation of
the working people and leaves space between the buildings to have enough sunlight and the
green space around the building block.

“The skin of cities is composed of constructions, texture and contrasts, of streets and
empty space of gardens and walls of contours and voids” said Sola-Morales. Neighbourhoods,
as replicas of the city at a small scale form their complexity by taking confronting all of these
parameters. For example, one a smaller scale, the obsession with zoning is visible by looking at
a single apartment block, placed in the middle of vegetation field, just like a clear physical
barrier, yet translucent. A way saying that here is the place to live, here is the space to meet
other people and here is a no passing zone, which of course, assure a degree of safeness, but
limits the other possible activities. What is then this space’s the degree of publicness – as a
commune product?
DECENTALIZATION

Fig. 10 -Scheme explaining polycentrism in Cluj (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

The commune places are important for achieving a more complex urban territory. The idea of
decentralisation is one of the characteristics of the post-war planning system in the Eastern
Europe. The propinquity of individuals is emphasized in spaces on different scales: a gradual
transition from private – the personal room, to the semiprivate – as the closed safe space of the
back garden, to the semi-public, to the actual public space – the neighbourhood centre. In the
case of Mănăstur, this type of place can be located in Mănăștur II area, where along the Islazului
street – a mixed function artery there shelters a few marketplaces, restaurants and other
functions like a local townhall. (Fig. 10) Referring to the analytical soviet concept, they
calculated the capacity of the facility (e.g., the restaurant) to the number of people living in the
apartment blocks surrounding it. Is that too restrictive or a way of splitting the space?

Fig. 11 – Model of Mănăștur II (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

Fig. 12 – Commercial Artery in Mănăștur II
MĂNĂȘTUR – AS THE ORDINARY IMAGE

Fig. 13 -Arial view of the Plopilor-Șesului and the Church of the Calvaria Hill (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

An urban tissue should be characterised by formality and aesthetics. Mănăștur was

designed to be very formal and its aesthetic to look industrial – prefabricated concrete as the
main material choice. The production of mass housing became so formal that it eliminated the
sense of identity and people appropriated the space by force. They imposed their need for
belonging in different manners – small gesture - a “do it yourself acupuncture” in that sense
(e.g. the gardens in front of the building block, the balconies and the hallways that became
space to grow plants). These are all results of the urban design that failed to satisfy the need
for good commune outside space. „Men and women as social beings are creating new forms of
„urbaneness”, and it falls down to us to interpret them and create processes and urban forms
for the new conditions.” (Busquets, 2006)

Industrialisation is one of the most innovated production systems since it simplifies the
process of building in less time with better materials. The Modern Movement, it is not to be
forgotten that, although, as ridged as described earlier, has used the regulatory acts and policies
as an instrument of social improvement of the living conditions of the inhabitants. From that
perspective it had succeeded. It is very important to mention that the interdisciplinarity
between the urban project and the architecture itself is crucial. If one is failing, the other one
finds itself in a need to compensate.

Joan Busquets defined 10 approaches to explain what an urbanistic project is and how
these strategies are influencing the development. This fragment of the paper will analyse how
Mănăștur defines itself though some of the lens these ambitions.
 Fig. 14 – Plan of the Plopilor-Șesului Region, 1976 (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)
Fig. 15 - Plan of the Plopilor-Șesului Region, 1988 (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)

Due to the nature of the neighbourhood: residential - which was designed using building
similar looking, grey and monotonic, the building standing out the most is the Church on the
Calvaria Hill. The religious space already has a certain vibration surrounding it. It used to be the
symbol of the village and it remained for the neighbourhood, and the city – a commune value
(Fig. 13). Other spaces that can fall under the category the landscape within the city are the
green squares – like the one on the Primaverii street or even the small ones in between the
blocks – elements of urban mobility that were well received because they displayed passive
surveillance by the people living in the apartments. (Fig. 20)

The problem of the with the mass production system is that it creates and reproduces
the matter all over again, it’s generally characterised by the big scale that is working on,
therefore practising acupuncture, implementing minimalist projects to help revitalise the area
is no the focus of the subject. Usually, the are processes happen in the neighbourhood after it
was already used for a while and had discovered the missing piece for its better function (e.g.
the parking built in order to eliminate the garages design in the 1975 project and to restore
the space to the inhabitants, the concept of urban regeneration of Planwerk (Fig. 21). The
urban project`s concept of decentralization and zone planning assured the neighbourhood
owns integrated functions other that the residential one, transforming in into the idea of a city
on top of the city. It is important not to be confused with the radical idea of the phalanstery.

Being the first project of this kind in Romania makes it an experiment, that was so well
perceive at that time. It was a model for the small cities to be development of other smaller
cities as well. The neighbourhood of Mănăștur became an extension of the bufferzone ( a
centroperipheral space that is direct connection with the city centre and protects it)

Fig. 16 -View from Calvaria Church to the future Primăverii Square with Calvaria Creek (source: Pănescu, E. 2016) Fig.
17 - View from the Calvaria Chruch to the future Primăverii Square, the Calvaria Creek was canalized(source: Pănescu, E. 2016)
THE RULE AND ITS THE EXCEPTION

Creating this “capsule like territory” will assure the satisfaction of the needs of the
people living there. This solution only applies to a certain extend. If we take for example of Ian
Gehl method of dividing a city by categorising the activities: necessary, optional, and outside
recreational, the limited space provided by the intervention (meaning the actual size of the
neighbourhood) will just lead to monotony. There are these big neighbourhoods (e.g. Mănăștur)
do not show any identity. They have the same schools, churches, outside space in almost the
same position. (Fig.9, 14, 15)
There was not much attention paid to design within the environment. That was mostly
due to the modernist hygienic rigid rules, which set the pace of the design prosses. (Fig.11, 12)
When working first with regulations so strictly, there is not much space for a creative outlet, for
room to grow and develop. The results are now limited to only a few which have been establish.
This mindset worked at that time, but looking further into the future - speculating, there is no
next step to take, Any intervention will be perceived as a parasite in the cleanness of the
functionalist plan. The most attention, due to the modernist influence was paid to orientation
and hygienic rules. Therefore, the plans of the apartments are well designed, but the lack of
attention to commune space, to outdoor activities and to the public space is creating a
significant problem. As Bernard Huet said, these approach lead to having green spaces – the
back gardens (which by definition are small patches of greenery), instead of parks or gardens.
Fortunately, the Plopilor-Șesului plan is the exception to the rule because of its closeness to
Someș River, where a sports park was created. The sport park (“Parcul Rozelor” and its
continuation “Parcul Iuliu Maniu”) is an interest point – a nucleus in the neighbourhood, yet it
serves the whole city. (Fig. 14)

Fig. 18 -Plan of the Primăverii Square Fig. 19 -Plan showing the pedestrian path that was not realized (source: Pănescu, E. 2016)
 But not all space where so well developed. Moving a little bit to the South, where the
Calvaria church is, without any signalling, there is a creek is flowing underneath all this
infrastructure. (Fig. 16, Fig. 17) Even though the initials plans prosed it, the administration has
missed the opportunity to creating a green buffer – a pedestrian ruth amongst its flow. The
masterplan of the 1976 integrated what could have been one of the most important
connections within the city: a pedestrian connection that would have started from the sports
park going through the green space of the Calvaria Church, passing the Primaverii (Fig. 18)
green space (square) of the Ensemble II, along the Calvaria Creek, reaching the Făget Forest.
(Fig. 19) It was never realised because, as explained earlier, the Calvaria Creek was canalized
entirely in early days, even though it could have been just a partial one. The final image of the
neighbourhood is now just a collection of few green spaces which are underdeveloped.

Fig. 20 – Appropriation of the back gardens (source: Instagram pace @scarafrumoasa)

4. THE AFTERMATHS OF THE SOCIALIST URBANISM

A. Rossi said the city is a “storage of history”, therefore the project represents the
socialist legacy of Cluj-Napoca, layered over the old memory of the village. Busquets (2006:229)
said, “We have to summarize now where we have come from in order to understand where we
stand and where we might be heading”. The socialist post-war tissue of Cluj-Napoca has added
a new layer to its already so complex palimpsest. Where do we, as inhabitants go from here?

This „concrete fantasy”, highly rational soviet outline, was so strictly followed that it left
behind enormous built matter that now has only a few options of adapting. Therefore, its cycle
of life is almost coming to an end, serving just one purpose: residential. Due the lack of diversity
and the stand size, these building are more liking to be abandoned or demolished, because as
aesthetically pleasing as they were in their time of glory, the city planners and architects are
finding it difficult to create another way of using them and the space around it. It only leads to
more construction (e.g. demolishing the garages to building a parking lot to assure the need of
parking space – highly necessary in Romania).

Cluj-Napoca is becoming to look like a metropolis, embedding that villages around it

and expended even further. If we say that the „future has no form” (Busquets, 2006: 300) we
are not wrong. We had this model of what a too regular fragment of this city looks like and its
negative impacted starting with the lack of appropriateness. Building within the surrounding is
meant to be different, because the landscape as an organism has similar but not identical
features. Working with a grid has been proved efficient if that model is being interpretated to
the existing conditions.
 Fig. 21 -Planwerk proposition of the revitalisation of the neighbourhood (source: Planwerk, E. 2016)

5. REFERENCES
Agachi, M. I. M. 2009. Clujul Modern: aspecte urbanistice, U.T. Press Cluj-Napoca

Belozerov, V. 2010. Planul Urbanistic General al Municipiului Cluj-Napoca. Matricea Geogrfica, Presa
Universitatea Clujeana, 2010

Busquets, J. 2006, Cities X Lines, Nicolori Editor

Sola-Morales, M. 2008. A matter of things, Pictoright in Amsterdam

Gehl, I. 2013, City for people, Island Press

Paunescu, E. Vasile, M., Tudose, E., Buzuloiu, A., Matei, A., Elkan, G., Spanu, R., Gyemant, A., Raiciu, L., Borda, A.,
Scripcariu, S., Vais, D., Popa, L., Planwerk, Crisan, M., Fodor, B., Agachi, I.M., Dinculescu, M. 2016 Cluj-Napoca în
proiecte 50 de ani 1960-2010, Casa Cărtii de stiinta

Lăzărescu, C. 1977 ,Urbanismul in Romania, Editura Tehnica, București

Enyedi, G., 1996. Urbaniszation under Socialism, Blackwell Publishers, pg. 100-118

Vais, D. 2020. Type Projects as Tools: Housing Type Design in Communist Romania. Architectural Histories,
8(1): 10, pp. 1–17

Belkis, D. Coman G., Sîrbu, C. Troc, G. 2003, pp. 135-151, Constrirea urbana, socială și simbolică a cartierului
Mănăștur, IDEA Magazin, nr 15-16

Poledna, R. 2005, Planificarea urbană de tip socialist versus planificarea urbană de tip;

Lynch, K., 1960, The image of the city, Cambridge MA: MIT Press