A study on the Post-War collective housing in Romania: density, privacy, personalisation

The refurbishment of the collective housing neighbourhoods requires a complex approach and reclaims energetic and ecological objectives, as well as aspects concerning the quality of living conditions.

Of the latter, the privacy and the personalization of the residence are key problems of the collective housing assemblies, regardless of the time they were built. For Post-War collective housing, these problems are more pronounced due to the political factor that dictated the urban and architectural features of the housing assemblies.

The first part of the paper studies the impairment of residential privacy and the depersonalization of the residence in the Post-War urban development in Romania, regarding different types of apartment buildings.

The second part of the paper analyses different architectural measures to rectify these problems, exploring their applicability in refurbishment operations.