Alexandra Masgras // Eugenic Architecture: Designing Modern Buildings and Bodies in Romania, 1920-44
Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University [forthcoming]
This dissertation examines the intertwined histories of modern architecture, eugenics, and right-wing politics in Romania in the period 1920-1944. Combining methods drawn from architectural, social, and political history, this study charts the development of eugenic architecture as the country turned progressively right-wing amidst the international rise of fascism and impending total mobilization. To this end, this project examines an array of building typologies designed to implement social- and racial-hygienic policies, ranging from youth homes for ethnic Romanians to rural puericulture dispensaries and forced labor camps. Although these building types were developed to match Romania’s social and political agenda, they were part of a broader international movement aimed at redesigning buildings—and bodies—according to eugenic tenets.
While in residence at the ZIKG, I will research the knowledge exchanges between Romanian architects and policymakers and their German counterparts, which paved the way to a shared eugenic culture. By taking a chronological approach, this project maps Romania’s rapprochement to N-S state and party institutions through international exhibitions, study and diplomatic visits, as well as press coverage. In particular, this study foregrounds the role of the Romanian Ministry of Health, Labor, and Social Protection in appropriating N-S policies of racial exclusion and Volksaufklärung through close collaboration with institutions such as the Deutsches Hygiene Museum, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, and the N-S legation to Bucharest.
This research aims to reveal how previously overlooked building typologies constituted tools of domestic state-building as well as of international world-making. Starting in the late 1930s, Romania’s eugenic architecture, while intended primarily to shape the body politic, was increasingly modelled on National-Socialist stylistic and programmatic elements. By exploring these transnational undercurrents, this research aims to shed light on the international scale of eugenic architecture, as well as on the scientific and political networks that underpinned it.
[Caption: Victor Ion Popa, “Expoziția Internațională Muncă și Voe Bună”, Arhitectura V, no. 3 (July-September 1939), 38-39. Double-page spread from the official publication of the Romanian Architects’ Corps, Arhitectura, showing the pavilions of the “Work and Joy” International Exhibition (Bucharest, June 1939), designed by architect Horia Creangă, after a state-sponsored visit to Germany to study the “new architecture.” Exhibition participants included Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, and France.]