Paper short abstract:

A rescaling of state power marks the nationalized housing process from Bucharest. An analysis of the sociology of architecture through the study of the economics and politics of this profession determines the extend to which the social space is produced and controlled by the political class.

Paper long abstract:

With the concern of a boundary between the state, the market and the individual, the present paper tries to understand a fine section within the broader debate of an urbanization process in post-socialist Romania, to gain a deeper perception on the renovation and selling process of old nationalized buildings declared representative for the cultural local heritage. This focus implies an understanding of the social space as incorporating social actions, as a means through which the social actors (architects, state officials and journalists) develop a general discourse or engage in a representational space by attaching meaning and regarding the nationalized houses as statements of esthetical perception, means of increasing the cultural heritage or excuses found by the political class in the process of establishing their positions in the field of power. In addition, the paper addresses the issue of social space as a means of control (Lefebvre, 1991) through which the state power is rescaled: authorities through their spatial practices, political pressures or state managed bureaucratic strategies power re-imagine the political patronage. The uniqueness of the restructuring process lies in the economics and politics of the architecture profession, its internal and external culture, its discourse and its language. Hence the research question: is the capitalist space and time (Petrovici, 2006) of Bucharest one characterized by architects as a tool of thought and action, by a renovation process as a first step towards a social production of the space and a bourgeois' reenactment of a hegemonic tool?