ABSTRACT
This might be seen as a paradox: how could rurality, naturally associated with
rooted tradition (if not with backwardness as well) become an operative factor
of modernity? For a predominantly agrarian country, like Romania used to be,
the paradox was only in superficial appearances. Modernity could not have
been achieved without conceptualizing and integrating the rural dimension. For
a young state, situated off the European stage in the nineteenth century, this
process was necessary for defining a new identity: it entailed political and eco-
nomic apprehension of the multiple layers of the complex ‘agrarian question’,1
but it signified also the sublimation of the concept of tradition in establishing a
modern Romanian culture. Architecture played an important role in shifting
rurality into an element of local modernity, employed both as an instrument of
modernization of the countryside and as a vehicle of a cultural renewal. This
chapter focuses only on this latter, namely on the impact of the inter-war archi-
tecture in shaping a new Romanian urbanity.
