Recently, one of the longest-lasting friends and collaborators of UAUIM, the teacher, architect, director, ship captain and marquis Javier de Cárdenas y Chávarri, left us. His activity in the field of architectural design (especially restoration-rehabilitation, with a special passion and dedication for vernacular and traditional architecture), didactic (where he excelled, training dozens of generations of students and master's students, in Spain, Latin America and in Romania, through the numerous organized summer schools), university management (director and even rector of several prestigious architecture schools in Spain) and as a promoter of some cultural foundations is overwhelming. We will dwell here on the collaboration with UAUIM, to evoke the contribution brought over several decades to the teaching and research activity of our University.
Javier de Cárdenas arrived in Bucharest for the first time shortly after the Revolution, in 1995, on the occasion of an extensive meeting of the Association of European Schools of Architecture (AEEA), at the invitation of the legendary professor Mac Popescu, who was at that time the driving force of the school and would remain so for many years to come. On this occasion, he establishes first contacts with the University management, but also with normal students, contacts that would later result in a superb collaboration of several decades. He was present in the international diploma juries, whenever he was requested, and in the first diploma defenses of the students of the Faculty of Interior Architecture (founded in 2003), so he became a regular at the international diploma juries at FAI. This was a natural thing, moreover, because he had personally founded, within ETSA Madrid, the career of Interior Architecture.
But the most remarkable initiative, which he supported personally, with great enthusiasm, was that of the Romanian-Spanish Architecture Workshops, started in 2006, within the Center for Vernacular Architecture Studies in Dealu Frumos. Starting from a small nucleus (Professor Javier de Cárdenas, Codina Dușoiu and Beatrice-Gabriela Jöger, young teachers at the time), the Romanian-Spanish Workshops, totaling 10 editions in which Professor Javier de Cárdenas personally participated and two others later, coagulated a whole host of professors and specialists from Spain, Romania and even Latin America, of which we mention here only a few: José Manuel Merino de Cáceres (reputed professor and restorer), Jaime de Hoz Onrubia (professor, historian), Fernando Vela Cossio ( Dr. Archaeologist, Deputy Director of ETSAM), Dr. Arch. Orlando Sepúlveda, University of Santiago de Chile, Santos García Alvarez (Dr. Arch., Professor), Ignacio Gil Crespo (Dr. Arch.), Emil Barbu Popescu (Prof. Dr. rector of arch.), Sorin Vasilescu (prof. dr. arch.), Hanna Derer (prof. dr. habil. arch.), Mihai Opreanu (conf. dr. arch.) and many others. The Romanian-Spanish workshops were an opportunity for live research of vernacular architecture and direct comparison of traditional Spanish and Romanian architecture, this cultural particularity making them unique. The quick drafts of the projects, designed in mixed teams of Romanian and Spanish students, based on observations and direct study in situ, were later the basis of solid, extensive research, materializing in some cases either in scientific papers and doctoral theses, either in intervention projects adopted by the town halls that gradually became road partners.
We can say that the model of the Romanian-Spanish workshops from 2006-2015, conceived and supported (including from his own funds) by Javier de Cárdenas created a kind of school, and not a few of the students of those workshops today carry out their own initiatives (summer schools, seminars, etc. ) in Romania or Spain. In fact, starting with 2009, the model of the Romanian-Spanish workshops was taken over by the Pro Patrimonio Foundation and the Câmpulung Muscel City Hall, which organized, in parallel, 7 other editions of similar workshops in Câmpulung (2009-2015), supported by Javier de Cárdenas through the foundation he created at that time (Diego de Sagredo).
His annual presence at Câmpulung, at the Romanian-Spanish workshops (Dealu Frumos, Northern Moladvia, Hațeg County, Constanța, Danube Delta, Giurgiu, etc.), but also at the judging of diploma projects and in international doctoral committees, made Javier de Cárdenas a great lover of our country and our school, which he perceived as a second home. It is also worth mentioning his initiatives to reward excellence, awarding from his own funds awards to the best students of the Romanian-Spanish workshops, for projects, graphics, drawing and even essays (an original initiative was the competition proposed by him "Câmpulung in 100 words").
The following lines can only be a modest evocation of a personality of architecture education, from whom his disciples (among whom many students and former students of our University) learned a careful and pragmatic approach to the profession, based on observation and logic , but also the love for heritage and tradition, direct and effective communication through language and drawing, trust in team partners. And, without a doubt, the joy of living life to the fullest!
Requiescat in pace!
Codina Dușoiu, Assoc.Prof. Ph.D. Arch.
Beatrice-Gabriela Jöger, Prof. habil. Ph.D. Arch.
In memoriam Javier de Cárdenas y Chávarri es.pdf
