(Or, You Couldn’t Make It Up: Part 67)
It appears that there is a growing consensus amongst Romania’s MPs (who yesterday generously voted for a whopping zero per cent increase in the basic state pension) to move out of their current home: Casa Poporului, allegedly the second largest building in the world.
The MPs appear to be casting longing glances towards the new National Library further along Bulevardul Unirii, a building started in 1989, but left to rot for 20 years: it is only now being finished. It currently looks like this:
but will soon be the most modern public building in the city. No wonder they fancy a bit of it.
If the MPs do move out of Casa Poporului, the question of course is what should be done with that ghastly building?
One MP, Silviu Prigoana (a man who made a fortune collecting rubbish) has suggested it be turned into a shopping mall. Other suggestions have been cultural centre (it already houses, alongside parliament, the Romanian Museum of Contemporary Art), and for storage of Elena Udrea’s shoes. (OK, we made that last one up).
What say all of you?
Knock it down and start again?
After three years working in Bucharest, I finally got around to going to this place – I’d been told by Romanian colleagues not to bother, but curiosity finally got the better of me. I am no great believer in feng shui, but there really is something wrong with the place. I don’t know what you could do with it.
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I say “turn it over to the Gypsies” so it can become an fruit and veg market on ground floor, plenty of storeage down below and accommodation for the relatives up top. Apart from anything else the way it was designed — with styles taken from every architectural style known to man — is rather like the way the gypsies build their villas. And it would save the Romanian state the estimated 20 million Euros they currently spend on maintenance costs.
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Parmalat Reply:
January 15th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
And what if a bomb drops (by mistake of course) on it after that? We lose all the gypsy population in the country. Who’s gonna be left to sing manele?!
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Craig Turp Reply:
January 15th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
We could live without Manele.
Best idea I have heard so far is to put every civil servant and every central and local govt. department in Bucharest in there. That way you would only need to visit one place to get all your paperwork done.
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Parmalat Reply:
January 15th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
And a metro station that would exit somewhere in the middle of the building, Louvre style. Because Piata Unirii is already overcrowded during regular working hours.
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By the way, Casa Poporului is about 60 times bigger than Dubai Mall, which is the biggest mall in the world. And that mall serves the entire world actually because the entire world goes to Dubai.
So if the Burj Khalifa costs 20 billion $, I think that a project centred around Casa Poporului (any project has to fit the magnitude of the building) would cost about 100 billion $. That would include hotels, touristic attractions in and around Casa Poporului, a new airport, access routes, etc…
I wonder if this project isn’t too big for the whole Europe itself… if you want to build anything around Casa Poporului you need to get a consortium of companies and banks for the deal. Is anyone ready to place such huge amounts of money here in Romania? No, I don’t think so.
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If you make Casa Poporului into a mall then you need to call Mall of America to help you. They are probably the only company with a large enough view to fill the Casa Poporului.
Then we could even bring the WWE to organize a wrestling show each year. Because it’s Mall of America right? 
:X
Then it remains just another problem: who’s gonna buy everyhting from that mall?
I think you can make such a mall in Casa Poporului so as to supply the entire Europe. So you need to bring in such stuff so as to attract the interest of people from the entire Europe. You can’t just make Unirea Shopping Centre version 2 in there…
Casa Poporului – powered by Mall of America would sound nice
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Craig Turp Reply:
January 15th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Wrestling, paintball. We getting some good ideas together here.
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I don’t mind that building. In fact I don’t mind the whole unirii area. If you can manage to put to one side its extremely objectionable origins it’s certainly interesting.
Paintball would be my preferred use
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Shopping mall is the way to go! Fits Romanians’ life style and aspirations. Who goes to museums these days? Especially contemporary art museums…
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