The Soarelui neighborhood is the result of an extensive program of housing construction from large prefabricated panels during the communist regime.
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At the beginning of the 60s of the 20th century, the communist regime started an extensive housing construction program in the new bedroom neighborhoods of Timișoara, composed of four, eight or ten-story apartment blocks, made of large prefabricated panels.
According to the opinions of the architect Mihai Opriș, on the eve of the Revolution of December 1989, more than two thirds of the population of Timisoara lived in such blocks.
In 1964, the Tipografilor neighborhood was built, then the one in Calea Șagului, Circumvalațiiunii, Calea Aradului, Calea Lipovei, Torontal, Matei Basarab, Girocului, Soarelui, Modern, Dâmbovița. These are neighborhoods with tens of thousands of homes, distributed free of charge to working people or purchased as service homes by the many businesses and factories in Timișoara or sold as personal property through the institution O.C.L.P.P. In many neighborhoods, the functional facilities necessary for a residential neighborhood were absent.
The totalitarian regime emphasized the quantity and the realization of a large number of constructions with different degrees of comfort, their quality being mediocre in many cases.
Mihai Opris, Timișoara. Small urban monograph, Technical Publishing House, Bucharest, 1987
Mihai Opriș, Mihai Botescu, Historical Architecture from Timișoara, Tempus Publishing House, Timișoara, 2014
https://www.hartablocuri.ro/istoria-blocurilor/#comuniste
https://www.filmedocumentare.com/viata-in-blocurile-comuniste/
https://www.vice.com/ro/article/wxeg7q/viata-la-bloc-in-anii-80-ai-comunismului-ceausist
Soarelui neighborhood – a bedroom neighborhood, schools
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I spent about ten years of my life as a teacher. First, at the school on Moise Nicoară, a street that stretched all the way to Bega, near the bridge at Prințul Turcesc. The "old" school building, as we called it, belonged to the church. Next to it another one was built, the "new" one. I had come here straight from college, as class leader. As I was the youngest, I was quickly put in charge of the pioneers. I was in charge of the "visual propaganda". In the school, painted in the style of the time, with walls that imitated marble or wood, we created a small revolution: we introduced sunny colours, fresh orange, white... The school was transformed. It had a youthful, refreshing air, I was invited to the city principals' meetings to talk about "the role of visual propaganda in education". I was not a little surprised when, instead of extolling the values of ideological education, resorting to the wooden language of the time, I showed how important the environment we create around us is, how the false marble we cover the walls with subliminally induces children to lie, how school performance is dependent on the fresh atmosphere of the colours around us. It was the 1980s.
A few years later, I moved to Circumvalatunii, to the 18th Primary School. Then, after 90, I left the education system. Signs appeared that I liked even less.
(Excerpt from End days and other days. Pages of (pseudo)correspondence. 19 June - 19 December 2015, handwritten volume by Sorina Jecza)
