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Antonescu, Petre
(b Rîmnicu Sarat, Braila, 29 June 1873; d Bucharest, 22 April 1965). Romanian architect and teacher. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, gaining a diploma in 1899. In 1900 he became a professor of history of architecture at the High School (later Academy) of Architecture, Bucharest. He was influenced by ION MINCU, whose principles of neo-Romanian architecture he adopted and considerably developed, becoming, after Mincu, the best-known proponent of this national style. Initially his use of the neo-Romanian vocabulary verged on the eclectic, with elements drawn from classicist and turn-of-the-century forms, as at the Kretzulescu Palace (1903; now headquarters of the UNESCO Centre for Higher Education), Bucharest, and the Casino and Palas Hotel (1903), Sinaia. At the end of World War I he became Rector of the High School of Architecture, and about this time he began experimenting in a style drawn from modern rationalist concepts, favouring reinforced concrete structures, but with Neo-classical decorative elements, for example in the University Building (19335; now the Law Faculty) and the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History (1939), both in Bucharest.
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