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As part of the topic of interest concerning dwelling conditions, the issues of the residential housing stock, of the large scale collective dwellings impaired by wear and tear, have been given a lot of attention in Western Europe, since the 8th decade of the last century. The rehabilitation of collective housing ensembles has become a major contemporary concern, requiring answers and solutions on a list of priorities, all the more so in the former communist countries, where the urban housing is mostly represented, for economic reasons, by the dense, large scale collective residential ensembles. Alongside the other components of the sustainable rehabilitation projects i.e., technical and constructive, architectural and urban, in an integrated and multidimensional approach, the psycho-social component cannot be minimised or ignored. The paper's objective is to define, develop and, finally, propose an holistic approach to intervention in the existing collective residential buildings in view of their sustainable rehabilitation, from a multidimensional architectural urban, socio-economic and ecologic perspective, through differentiated levels: from that of primary, basic residential units (apartments), to the group they are aggregated into (architectural object) and to the housing ensembles. The paper is not aimed only at physically renovating the architectural and urban components; its implicit objective, through the proposed measures, being to revitalize and regenerate the residential areas from a psycho-social perspective, as well, by limiting social segregation, stimulating microcommunity sociability, creating a beneficial, secure environment, enhancing life quality and dwelling satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While ephemerality in contemporary architecture usually refers to temporary structures exhibiting new construction technologies, innovative conceptions, materials and structures, the notion is as old as architecture itself and has served, throughout history, as a vessel of becoming. If Plato considered our world as a receptacle for the transforming and evolving copies of the unchangeable models, of Ideas, ephemeral architecture, considered as that which allows being and becoming, has no fixed qualities of its own, but forms itself to that which it contains, and as such, has the potential of becoming a symbol. While being less interested in its consumption-related transience, on its "haute couture" play of forms and volumes at the Universal Exhibitions, this paper is interested in exploring the various aspects of ephemeral architecture with a precise focus on the paradoxical state of permanence it had the ability to embody throughout history, starting with the Tabernacles of Moses, and reaching the 19th and 20th centuries with their technological prowess, their manifesto buildings as symbols of a new era being born, of a new worldview that shaped the epoch we presently live in, up to the point of shaping our perceptions of what architecture is and should be. The study followed an interpretative-historical research, and used a process of combination based on Western and Eastern philosophy, history of religions, and literature on the history and theory of architecture. The paper explores the links between secular and devotional ephemeral architecture, taking into consideration the fact that different functions can operate in similar shapes, the essence of a building, be it temporary or not, residing in the meaning encrypted in its language and its spatial composition. The title of the paper encodes, in itself, the substance: "Cathedrals of ephemerality" refers precisely to those ephemeral building that became cultural icons, while "Impermanence as symbol" refers to their unchanging - albeit intangible - essence kept alive and present in the collective mind, thus creating an intelligible thread of meaning throughout history. Additionally, the subject of the research allowed, as a side note, an inquiry into the very nature of architectural space, Daoist philosophy representing an excellent tool when analyzing the relationships between exterior and interior, between built space and empty space, between container and contained, and offered this particular research the connecting line between past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]