Rezistenta Naturala
Obor-Cocor

Our city is under transformation induced by neo-liberalism, perverted architecture is built, stimulating people to consume even if they don't have the means to do so. This complex process seems to function, old common habitudes and ways of life are abandoned, and architecture from previous historical layers is deprived of its public functions and becomes archaeology. This transformation on the other hand generates forms of resistance like the situation in Hala Obor. This space was built in 1937 by the architect Horia Creanga and represents maybe the best example of Bucharest modern architecture. The minimal severe shape of the building is populated through its function, a market for common people with improvised structures, inside this unitary architectural item. On one side this situation to have a cultural item hosting popular culture seems to suggest that people in Bucharest can still afford a kind of social utopia, on the other this place is unconsciously resisting capitalism. Of course there is pressure on this place from the new economic structures, there was also during communism, but the place remained almost unchanged at least from the moment of our childhood. The other place we are documenting is a commercial store built during communism Magazinul Cocor. Here the owners would like to transform it in a mall but maybe because of the interior proportions of the building it seems it's impossible and the structure remains trapped between politic and economic systems with empty spaces inside and views all over the outside windows of the former socialist past or the historic city.