The LOEB Fellowship

Liliana Cazacu, Romanian architect and consultant, works to preserve local landmarks while building community resilience in the face of challenging demographic changes. She has witnessed the distorted relation of the Romanians with their built heritage and how this affects the way people live, and she works towards improvement by developing strategies, repairing historic buildings, teaching and studying.

Cazacu’s work has improved the relation between local public administration and civil society. She worked with a local NGO to implement a pilot project with local cities, based on the US Mayor’s Institute on City Design. Her work helped position the NGO to be selected by the city of Sibiu, a 2007 European Cultural Capital, to create its Development Guide for the City 2014-2020. After years of working to preserve the medieval fortified churches, Cazacu challenged the paradigm of ownership by religious organizations. Today an endowment under the patronage of 2 state presidents is being built within the Evangelical Church, which owns the churches. Her efforts continue to reconnect local communities with the past and thus support their economic development based on their cultural resources.

After years of working with all levels of local responsible authorities and stakeholders and connecting them with partners from different countries, Cazacu used the Loeb Fellowship year to work to improve the way the national historic resources are being used. In a country with a high appetite for information and communications technology, she plans to use new technologies to overcome the negative impact of dramatic demographic changes on the built environment.

Liliana Cazacu talks about her work.