Abstract
This paper explores how Romanian architectural discourse conceptualized time and the future during the 1960s, focusing on housing design. It reveals a correlation between the timescale of future perspectives and the spatial scales in thinking housing. Examining the concept of the “prospective” and its international sources, it traces its short-lived history (from the mid- 1960s to the mid-1970s), its dualism of meanings (visionary vs. scientific), and its pragmatic alternatives (forecasting, prognosis). It argues that future-oriented thinking in architectural culture, culminating in a period of relative openness to the West, itself corresponded with the interests of the Communist regime in mastering time in urban and territorial development.