As the very name suggests, DITCP coordinates the teaching and research activity in the history and theory of architecture, fundamental fields for the training of future architects. Likewise, DITCP guides and sees to the further training of architecture students in the highly topical field of integrated conservation of heritage: restoration and rehabilitation of monuments and sites, and the administration of the cultural heritage in general.
These activities take place function of the requirements of each of the academic units and cycles of UAUIM: architecture, urban planning and design faculties, graduation (college) and master’s degree, postgraduate studies.
The postgraduate study programs within DITCP (doctoral school, master’s degree in “The Sacred Space and Vernacular Architecture” and master’s degree in “Conservation and Rehabilitation of the Built Heritage”, organized together with the Technical Sciences Desk) have an interdisciplinary character, being open both to architects, urban planners, and professionals in related fields. Works are carried out in cooperation with experts from the respective domains, from without the institution and from abroad, as well as through collaboration programs with prestigious foreign schools and institutions.
Prof. Dr. Arch. Mihail Caffe, Prof. Dr .Arch. Anca Bratuleanu, Prof. Dr. Arch. Ana Maria Zahariade, and Prof. Dr. Arch. Nicolae Lascu coordinate doctoral dissertations in the history of architecture, in restoration, and theory of architecture.
For administrative reasons, the DITCP has also come to include foreign languages and physical education.
DITCP continues the tradition initiated by professor Grigore Ionescu, one of the greatest historians of architecture in Romania, and also an outstanding modern architect. Thus, in 1951, the History of Architecture Desk was set up, which subsequently merged with that of the Theory of Architecture. G.M. Cantacuzino, Richard Bordenache, Gheorghe Patrascu, Dinu Teodorescu, Mac Constantinescu, Gheorghe Curinschi-Vorona, Titus Mocanu, Sanda Voiculescu, Mihail Caffé, and others helped enhance the prestige of the Desk of History and Theory of Architecture. This cultural structure weathered through the last years, before 1989, of the communist dictatorship, when the Desk was nearly dismantled, the theoretical disciplines being merged or cut down to no scientific avail.
After 1989, based on the teaching and research tradition owed to glorious names in its past, the Desk resumed its functions under the leadership of Professor Doctor Sanda Voiculescu. She not only continued in the footsteps of the predecessors but also opened up new paths to contemporary developments, joint with endeavors in the history and theory of architecture or in appended fields, such as restoration and conservation of monuments, heritage administration, history of the arts, philosophy of culture, criticism and theory of architecture.
The general teaching and research trends within DITCP rest on the rigorous principles of professional competence laid down by Professor Grigore Ionescu at the creation of the relevant structure; at the same time contents and methods are permanently renewed, in consonance with modern approaches and educational practice.
Each field is taken individually and also in relation with the other disciplines taught.
Similarly, post-university courses are adjusted to the prior training of the students and their fields of interest.
Thus, on the one hand, our professors are involved in research topics that cut across the strict domain of the trade, and on the other, students may bask in various interpretations and concepts of architecture, these courses putting forth the potential that methodological diversity and trans-discipline approaches offer to architecture in general.
In keeping with the theoretical profile of the Desk, research represents a fundamental element of DITCP activity and a constant support of the teaching process. All the staff of the Desk involved in research activity both within the university and individually takes charge of the organization and supervision of the students’ research activity, proposing research topics in keeping with the course curriculum or, as the case may be, collaboration in DITCP studies and projects.
An important place in research activity goes to the completion of the Desk’s valuable, more than century-old archive (about 3,000 surveys), the only of its kind in Romania, an important source of information as far as architecture monuments are concerned.
A most variegated, sustained and popularized activity of university research is taking place within DITCP, the Desk striving to become a nexus of cultural excellence.