For several days, the press wrote with indignation about the transfer of the monument to the Ardelan school from Cluj and the dismantling of the entire complex that surrounded it, in the context of street reconstruction works. And that’s right, because what happened is terribly painful! I will explain why.

The removed composition was not actually a pedestal, but an elegant esplanade, which in itself was a sober and delicate monument, not inferior to the wonderful work of Romulus Laday. The ensemble primarily included a clearly delineated landscape and functional green zone, protected by an inconspicuous forged fence. This green area perfectly balanced the passage leading to the monument, designed to provide preliminary visual contact, at an optimal distance, after which the avenue opened up into two monumental steps, allowing pedestrians to bypass the sculptural group. I can’t help but recall the inscription that clearly recorded what the poem was about, skilfully placed on the ground, on a block of stone that ingeniously connected the outer space with the passage to the monument, a contrivance that kept its didacticism intact . the pure and spiritual lines of the statues speak for themselves. The ensemble was crowned by two luxurious fir trees planted behind the sculptural group, to which I will return again, because, believe me, it is worth it!

I have written the above passage to show that matters of this kind are very serious and that they are dealt with by demanding fields of activity such as urban architecture, landscape design, art history, monumental public art, etc. But please go to Google Maps for a minute (until we get the pre-crash image out there) and you’ll see exactly what we’re talking about!

As for me, when I heard that the city hall claimed that the statues were taken down because that way they would be integrated into common space, I thought I was suffocating with indignation. There are no Romanian, Hungarian or English dialects to express how I feel! For decades, I stopped in front of the statues, gazed at the extraordinary characters about whom I wrote several books in my lifetime, and sat on the cozy steps, next to students and passers-by, sipping from a bottle of Coke. looked at Vovcha Street. This means common spaceMy fellow architects and specialists, I am sharing my troubles with you, not the colorful slides you show at design contests.

Obviously, everyone knows that nowadays statues are sometimes placed at ground level. In Alba Iulia in the citadel, to go no further, there are several very good examples of this kind. However, as rightly noted by Ion Kosmovichi, we are talking about modern works that were thought out in this way from the very beginning.[i]. This is completely and utterly different.

Let’s leave mourning and see what can be done! What scared me the most was that Mayor Emil Bock, who took note of the public protests, said that it would be carried out another outletappropriate a new context. This proposal is absolutely unacceptable, since the demolished ensemble was designed specifically for this sculptural group. There is no alternative!

The old ensemble can also be integrated into the new context with granite tiles, which are neutral enough and which, like all the stands and stands with products from the various events, will also support the esplanade of the Ardelene school. And if a bicycle path in the new situation needs to be moved by a few meters, I invite the specialists involved in the project to solve it as soon as possible. All this, not to mention the requirements of legislation and common sense, which prohibit us from changing the original form of some monuments. It is good that a resident of Cluj, who lives in the center, cannot even redo the window frames, but the city hall allows to restore the appearance of the symbol of the city from scratch. And in that ensemble, everything is a monument. Including Christmas trees!

I promised to return to the fir trees, because their disappearance creates a big problem of stylistic conformity and perspective. This is not the ecological alphabet, as they say in the city hall, that we remove 2 fir trees and plant 4.5 sycamores. This is a much more serious problem that cannot be corrected with palliative measures. If you look at Google Maps, you will notice that the complex is located between the central building of the university and the university building. Two magnificent buildings, the first was built under Franz Joseph, between 1893-1902, in the historical Neo-Renaissance style, the second in the period 1934-1937, during the reign of Charles II, in the manner of interwar architectural cubism. From a stylistic point of view, these two very successful creations correspond to each other in the same way that the Romanians corresponded to the Hungarians in the mentioned century. They don’t really go together. This is also an aspect of the fascinating history of the architectural past (and not only) of this city.

However, the irony of history forced the architects of Ceausescu’s time, who also knew their craft well enough and also created in the treasury city and are the grandparents of IT specialists in today’s five-star city, to propose an excellent solution to this problem on the occasion of the location of the Ladei statuary group in 1973 year The stylistic gap in this corner was broken by an ensemble that filled this space with a main connecting element that resonates with both neighboring buildings and harmonizes the stylistic perspective along the entire axis of Kogelničianu Street.

The statues themselves do not solve anything in this matter, because the most important element was the fir trees. Of course, they were of primary importance for the monument. What could be more beautiful and attractive than the two tall fir trees towering above the spiers of the Ardelen school, observing their meditative sojourn under the stars of the Transylvanian space! On the other hand, behind the statuary group rises the vertical tower of University House, which is really out of place in this context and disrupts the perspective of the Reformed Church, something like the Shard outlined over London Bridge. But all this deficiency was corrected by the two fir trees that grew on that dry and high wall, they perfectly rhymed with its verticality and gave it life regardless of the season, because they were conifers (you know, those evergreen things that I don’t like autumn leaves ). So, dear gentlemen, here we are talking about the whole history, which you will wipe with a sponge, if you do not restore the monument in the form in which it was, and if you do not plant two fir trees in its place, which our children will grow.

Therefore, I appeal and ask the people of Cluj, first of all, not to politicize this issue, if they are interested in putting everything back in place, and not destroying Bok or I know who else.. Read more artiol on Contributors.ro