The ideas and expressions/forms of the Modern Movement entered the Romanian architectural scene in the late 1920s, closely related to the modernizing structural transformations that followed the end of the First World War and the Unification with Transylvania. The liberal élan, the economic progress and growing prosperity, the urban development, the increasing importance of modern bureaucracy, the advances in education, etc. largely contributed to the penetration of the new architecture in a society in full swing and a culture already aware of/familiar with the effervescence of avant-gardes in literature and plastic arts.   

 Offering an alternative to the traditional tendencies of the Romanian architecture —especially the “national style”, highly popular at the beginning of the 20th century—, the modernist architecture met the ethos of the new urban bourgeoisie in need of distinctive representation, which, along with the proven efficacity of modernist buildings, accounted for the steadily increasing pace of modern constructions, virtually untouched by the general crisis 1929-33, and continuing during the Second World War until the 1948 nationalization.

 In spite of the relatively late adoption of the modernist formal language and its apparent temperance, Romanian interwar Modernism knew an increasing adherence among architects, private investors and the public, becoming even fashionable in the 1930s, which transformed the urban image of the capital city of Bucharest, especially.

 The most representative names, to whom this adherence is mainly indebted, were Marcel Iancu (founder of the Dada movement, painter, essayist, editorialist) and Horia Creangă (probably the most accomplished modernist of the period). They were quickly followed by many other architects, such as G. M. Cantacuzino (also the most original theorist), Octav Doicescu, Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory, Grigore Ionescu, etc., most of them continuing their work after the Second World War, employed in the state-design institutes from 1952 on. 

 Although, at the beginning, the installation of the Communist regime seemed favourable to the modernist expectations of a new generation of architects (with some interesting modernist achievements), the Soviet imposed interlude of Socialist Realism opened a gap within the modern tradition.

 In the end of 1950s, following Khrushchev’s attack on the Stalinist establishment, the modernist line was however revived, as in all “satellite-countries”. However, for ideological reasons, that revival was never accepted as a continuation of the interwar modernism, which was politically discredited and hardly studied.

The Communist project was very ambitious and the impressive built volume was generally designed in line with the widely spread conventional Modernism used for the mass-construction. Yet it produced interesting examples (generous, elegant urban compositions or architectural expressiveness and relative originality), while the architectural and urban research was seeking new approaches inside the accepted models.   

The 1980s, with Ceaușescu’s national-communism and aspirations to a new form of Stalinism meant a new break with the modernist development: many damages were caused to valuable urban spaces and modernist landscape, the lack of maintenance marked many modernist buildings. These signs are still visible and obstruct an objective perspective of the modernist heritage. If we add the general attraction to the decorative, the rejection of what is linked to the communist period, and the real estate pressure, we can understand both the danger of losing valuable modernist places and the emergency of identifying and documenting them. 

 The real reconnection to the interwar modernity took place only after the fall of the communist regime through the rather individual endeavour of the professionals for researching and promoting the architecture of Romanian modernism and to make its known and acknowledged.

 Therefore, the selection of the examples is aiming to display the persistence of the modernist tradition, highlighting the connexions between the European modernist discourse and the local/Romanian architectural manifestations.