Apartment Building 63, also called Commune 63 (Romanian ''Comuna 63'') is an

apartment building An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement ( Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) ...

located in the Dristor neighbourhood in the south-eastern part of

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

( Sectorul 3) and it is the largest single

residential building A residential area is a land used in which houses, housing predominates, as opposed to industrial district, industrial and Commercial Area, commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

with a total of 950 one-room apartments, and holding just over 1,600 residents, although up to 2,500 people may be living there. The building is nicknamed the ''commune'' because of the large number of apartments that could house an entire village or commune, and because of the long corridors that stretch from one end of the building to the other and resemble a long country road. The apartment building has four staircases of 10 floors each and is built in the shape of a giant Z with an extension in the southern part of the structure. It is located near the

Dristor metro station Dristor is a major metro station in Bucharest. It is located on the Bd. Camil Ressu – Șoseaua Mihai Bravu – Calea Dudești junction. The half of the station at the end of metro line 1 is called Dristor 2; the other half is Dristor 1, where t ...

, a major node of the

Bucharest Metro The Bucharest Metro () is an underground rapid transit system that serves Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It first opened for service on 16 November 1979. The network is run by Metrorex. One of two parts of the larger Transport in Bucharest, B ...

's railway network.

History

Apartment Building 63 was finished and opened in 1963 and was first intended to be inhabited by officers of the

Romanian Armed Forces The Romanian Armed Forces ( or ''Armata Română'') are the military forces of Romania. It comprises the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Force. The current Commander-in-chief is Lieutenant General Gheorghiță Vlad who is managed by ...

and of the Ministry of Administration and Interior. In the same year, the selected officers started to move into the apartments from the first two staircases of the building but because of the intensive demolition projects undergone in the area, the original purpose of the building was changed, and the structure's role was to serve as a new home for the people that had to move from their demolished houses. The building was considered by the

Romanian Communist Party The Romanian Communist Party ( ; PCR) was a communist party in Romania. The successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave an ideological endorsement to a communist revolution that would replace the social system ...

to be a symbol of the centralized state and an outstanding feat of engineering designed for the citizen comrade in the vision of the

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

perspective. Another four sister buildings, built in the same year, are scattered across the eastern part of Bucharest; one of them is near Mihai Bravu Avenue, called Block P10 on Oborul Nou Street, and another one is called Block M31, located on Aleea Barajul Bicaz.

References

{{Coord, 44, 25, 17.1, N, 26, 8, 22.2, E, display=title Apartment buildings Residential buildings in Bucharest 1963 establishments in Romania Residential buildings completed in 1963