The Lost Country of the Roma

“The truth is that, in the days of yore, the Gypsies had a country. Now they keep searching for it in vain, the wheels of their wagons wearing ruts in the road as they travel them back and forth, looking for a hidden spot of earth somewhere under an out-of-the-way patch of sky. Only in their souls does the hope still exist that one day they will find their country. Then they will gather together from the farthest corners of the world where they have been scattered, and they will never leave it again.”¹

Surrounded by hills, mountains and valleys, Garcini is a Roma settlement on the outskirts of Brasov. Despite its proximity to the city, and a traditional neighbouring village, the Garcini settlement is neglected and isolated, socially as well as physically. The Roma community is outside any urban or rural development frameworks. This is, as Troy Conrad Therrien would term it, an example of ‘countrysiding’, a “funnelling” of “populations into the countryside of the mind,” a “flatland of the imagination.”

The architectural proposal is aware of the fragile social and environmental landscape of Garcini and its unstable conditions. It explores the movements within this territory (Roma, goods, animals, water, ground), and develops an architecture that intersects with the muddy/frozen ground between the village and the Roma settlement. It takes the craft practices for which the Roma were celebrated, and provides an opportunity for these practices to be passed on. Workshops for making, farming, recycling, and spaces for gatherings and social events offer the Roma a place of their own, and at the same time reinforce the dialogue between the Roma and other local urban communities.

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