In the history of building, Alexandru Orăscu is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Alexandru Orăscu as Romanian architect (1817-1894).
Alexandru Orăscu was born in 1817. His recorded nationality is Romania.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
He is recorded as architect and politician.
An architect is judged by how a building is used a century after the drawings.
That the work was built in Romania shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Alexandru Orăscu died in 1894, aged 77. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
