The man’s house

Authors’ Comment

A man's house

A family bought a building in Bucharest, near Lake Floreasca and the St. Sophia Church. The land, measuring 300 square meters, had on it an old, decaying construction, a house classified as a grade B historical monument. During this time, two other annex-buildings were successively added. Various functional needs of the old owners were thus solved, but the annexes, having no architectural value, parasitized the old monument.

The new owners wanted a simple, functional and comfortable home. For this, the old house was consolidated, restored and extended with a new body, located in the back area of the lot.

The main concern was, in addition to the absolutely necessary functional solutions, the revitalization of the monument house and finding favorable solutions for integration between the old and the new house. For this we considered that transparency may be the right solution. Thus, through the project we proposed:
• A functional and symbolic connection on the ground floor between the monument house and the new construction, through a staircase that preserves the location of the secondary access staircase to the old annexes;
• Ensuring visibility of this connection from the inside and outside, through the total transparency of the ground floor and the premises at the level of the new construction floor. The wall of the old house, containing the window, the door and the secondary staircase, crosses the space of the new extension, creating an interesting scenography. Day and night, from the spaces of the new construction, through transparent, representative sequences of the old monument can be cut.

I was happy when a good architect friend, stepping into this new space, told me something simple - here is a man's house. For me, it was a first proof that we succeeded, realizing what we set out to do from the very beginning, a functional, comfortable and welcoming home, through an approach in which exaggerated ambition and vanity were set aside.