A photographic exhibition on the architecture of Romania was hosted within the Faculty for the Built Environment of the University of Malta to serve as a showcase to architecture students. The exhibition was inaugurated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion Hon. Carmelo Abela in the presence of the Rector of the University Prof. Alfred Vella on 2nd May 2019. The Hon. Minister was greeted by the Dean of the Faculty Prof. Alex Torpiano. Present for the inauguration there were the Honorary Consul of Romania in Malta Ms Cristina Farrugia, the Ambassador of Malta to Romania and a resident academic at the Faculty for the Built Environment Lino Bianco, various Ambassadors, and the Director of the Doctor School of the University of Malta Prof. Nicholas Vella.
This travelling exhibition on the architecture of Romania, which marks a century since the establishment of Greater Romania (1918-2018), included Malta in its itinerary. It is coordinated by the Cultural Association ARCATECH and financed by the Bucharest City Hall and the Popular University “Ioan I. Dalles”. It is curated by the Prof. Augustin Ioan, the Vice-Rector and Head of Doctoral Studies of “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, and Prof. Marius Marcu-Lapadat, Dean of the Faculty of Interior Architecture at the same university.
Included in this photographic exhibition are some of the relevant nation-building processes that local architecture encompassed until WWII (1918-1945), during the Communist Era (1948-1989) and the transitional period to-date (1990-2018). It is accompanied by a 40-page full-colour catalogue with historical descriptions of the context in which this architecture of the respective periods flourished.
Given the response of the students at the Faculty and the general interest it generated on campus, the exhibition, which was original scheduled to last until the end of May, was extended to the end of June.