Home
Alexandru Gheorghe's Architecture Site
Chirpici house in București, Romania
Alex Gheorghe, Adrian Gheorghe's son, and his friend Nitu Valentin are students of Architecture and Landscaping at Bucharest, București, the capital city of Romania. Because of this study, they are able to see many beautiful and interesting places in the city, while they are involved in projects for their University studies. This page shows some of the architecture of Romania through their eyes.
This is a "Chirpici" house, which means a house made out of mud. Chirpici means mud mixed with straw, and this material was applied with bare hands on a wooden structure to create the actual walls of the house. This method was used a very long time ago, but it can still be found in rural areas, where old houses survived. Finding it in the middle of Bucharest came as a huge surprise, but is yet another proof that the old villages which surrounded the city more than 100 years ago ended up being part of the city, when it expanded.
This photograph shows the house from a distance, and you can see that it is still standing and looking pretty good, in spite of its age. It is also inhabited, and the owners agreed to let us take some pictures when we explained that we come from the university and we only want to find out more about old architecture.
Photo and Text: Alexandru Gheorghe and Nitu Valentin, February 2010
These photographs present details from the green wooden post that you can see in the first picture also, where the fence meets the wall of the house. The designs you see are traditional and have a variety of geometrical shapes. I personally believe they look very beautiful and that is why I wanted to catch as many as possible on camera. Some are not so visible, the paint covered them, I suppose the post was initially without any paint on it
Photo and Text: Alexandru Gheorghe and Nitu Valentin, February 2010
This photograph shows the internal structure of the house. The mud is visible, the wood also, even the straw. It's a great way of better understanding how these houses were built and what materials were used. From what I know, although it didn't provide too much strength to the wall, such a structure had some great advantages. The most obvious is it was very, very cheap. Also, it was easy to repair or replace and, you might me surprised, it was very good for heat insulation, keeping cool during summer and warm in the winter, because the walls stopped the heat from entering the house or from leaving it. Clever no?
Photo and Text: Alexandru Gheorghe and Nitu Valentin, February 2010
This shows another traditional pattern, a flower painted just as the old rural artists would have done it. Another proof of the origin of this house and its age. A very beautiful mark also because of the colors, as you might know, green and red form a contrast, just as blue and orange or violet and yellow do.
Photo and Text: Alexandru Gheorghe and Nitu Valentin, February 2010
Home
Alexis Project Filiasi/Romania
RC J/263/230/2007 CIF 21464151
Email: [email protected]