Apartment building on Av. Mircea Zorileanu Street2020

Authors’ Comment

The building is inserted in a well-established area with clear architectural and urban qualities accumulated over time, without it being designed for luxury living from the very beginning. This status was only subsequently acquired, both due to the fine quality of most buildings dating from the initial stage and to the social and economic status of the inhabitants, which grew as the area integrated into the city and the neighborhoods gained in prestige.
In the last two decades, these qualities have had to deal with threats generated, on the one hand, by the poor quality of most of the recent additions and, on the other hand, by the speculative pressures, economically motivated, which have engendered high densities, much higher than those that defined the initial character of this area.
The insertion we propose has consciously taken on the challenge of mediating between the imperatives of maximum use of the buildable potential of a plot purchased at a peak in the real estate market and the design brief, requiring the achievement of comfort indicators and a representation specific to luxury housing, all under a constraining budget.
We tried to avoid at all costs the transposition of the large built-up areas into an image of massiveness that would have removed the building from the scale of the neighborhoods. The building relies on a play of plans and volumes that accentuate horizontality while the finishes refer to the idea of a high standard home, without promoting opulence.