Considering Romania’s political transposition in 1989 and the effect incurred on its healthcare infrastructure, fire outbreaks have magnified the architect’s role in designing facilities that remain flexible and adaptive despite urbicidal disintegration, balancing duty of care with the social right to health amid nepotism and fiscal austerity policies imposed.
The functionality of healthcare is paramount in the development of a thriving and equitable society; however, the Romanian public healthcare system presents a stark contrast, presently impaired and qualitatively poor. Infrastructurally Romanian healthcare institutions remain bound to the communist regime, as the 20th century played a foundational role in forming much of the existing built environment which has seen minimal restoration, despite improved expectations concerning living conditions and a current 21st century democratic government. The dissertation investigates Romania’s healthcare crisis through a focused case study: the Clinical Hospital of Obstetrics & Gynecology - Prof. Dr Panait Sarbu located in Bucharest and most notably associated with the ‘The Giulesti Maternity Fire - 2010’, an example of numerous tragedies within the parameters of the healthcare system in which innocent lives continue to be lost. The dissertation uses fires as an analytical proxy to expose the deeper political and economical dysfunctions which facilitates the pinnacle of structural disintegration, highlighting issues such as urbicide, fiscal austerity, bribery, nepotism, economic capital and the mediatisation of the public health crisis. Moreover, the dissertation frames health as a discontinued duty of care, augmenting the extent to which institutional instability is attributed to the country’s political transposition in 1989 and the realities which have been incurred or inherited. In response, the study culminates with the proposed deployment of the Open Building and System Separation methodological frameworks, models which imply that structurally adaptive and strategically planned healthcare environments could present greater resilience towards the effects of direct or indirect systemic urbicide. If healthcare infrastructure continues to deteriorate, through structural integrity failures and numerous fire related crises, this poses a profound fissure inflicted on societal integrity, whereby the disintegration of hospitals signals the withdrawal of health + (care) from the necessity of human condition, leaving urbicidal annihilation to persist unimpeded.
The functionality of healthcare is paramount in the development of a thriving and equitable society; however, the Romanian public healthcare system presents a stark contrast, presently impaired and qualitatively poor. Infrastructurally Romanian healthcare institutions remain bound to the communist regime, as the 20th century played a foundational role in forming much of the existing built environment which has seen minimal restoration, despite improved expectations concerning living conditions and a current 21st century democratic government. The dissertation investigates Romania’s healthcare crisis through a focused case study: the Clinical Hospital of Obstetrics & Gynecology - Prof. Dr Panait Sarbu located in Bucharest and most notably associated with the ‘The Giulesti Maternity Fire - 2010’, an example of numerous tragedies within the parameters of the healthcare system in which innocent lives continue to be lost. The dissertation uses fires as an analytical proxy to expose the deeper political and economical dysfunctions which facilitates the pinnacle of structural disintegration, highlighting issues such as urbicide, fiscal austerity, bribery, nepotism, economic capital and the mediatisation of the public health crisis. Moreover, the dissertation frames health as a discontinued duty of care, augmenting the extent to which institutional instability is attributed to the country’s political transposition in 1989 and the realities which have been incurred or inherited. In response, the study culminates with the proposed deployment of the Open Building and System Separation methodological frameworks, models which imply that structurally adaptive and strategically planned healthcare environments could present greater resilience towards the effects of direct or indirect systemic urbicide. If healthcare infrastructure continues to deteriorate, through structural integrity failures and numerous fire related crises, this poses a profound fissure inflicted on societal integrity, whereby the disintegration of hospitals signals the withdrawal of health + (care) from the necessity of human condition, leaving urbicidal annihilation to persist unimpeded.
Fig. 1 ‘Sănătatea Care Ne Arde’ (‘Health That Burns Us’) campaign poster. Source: Context.ro (2023).
Fig. 2 Evacuation following the Giulești Maternity Hospital fire, Bucharest, 2010. Source: Carbune, D., Stiri de Cluj (2010).
Fig. 3 Scînteia newspaper, 24 July 1984. “101 new hospitals, built during the socialist years, in all counties of the country”. Source: Scînteia, no. 13037 (1984), via Arcanum.
Fig. 4 Scînteia newspaper, 24 July 1984. “Extensive expansion of the material base of health”. Source: Scînteia, no. 13037 (1984), via Arcanum.
Fig. 5 Scînteia newspaper, 24 July 1984. “This year, 16.6 billion lei for free medical care”. Source: Scînteia, no. 13037 (1984), via Arcanum.