Memory / Matter

Authors’ Comment

Within the historic urban area of Sibiu, the intervention on an existing 1932 house becomes an exercise in balance between what must be preserved, what must be transformed, and what can be added. Over time, the building has undergone successive interventions, more or less harmful to the coherence of its exterior and interior architecture. The MEMORY / MATTER project starts from this tension and proposes a new interior identity for an existing home, without modifying the volumetry or the exterior image.

The concept builds the new space starting from the existing material substance: brick masonry is exposed in key points, the timber structure is revealed, and existing proportions serve as benchmarks for the contemporary intervention. Rather than concealing the traces of time, the design turns them into an active component of the atmosphere. Architectural memory is established through the dialogue between the raw brick detail, interior joinery design, exposed beams, and new materials.

The material palette is restrained, tactile, and coherent: mineral finishes, stone, wood, brick, fluted glass, and targeted chromatic accents. Rounded forms of furniture and objects introduce a counterbalance to the rigid geometry of the structure, while natural light and architectural lighting shape the texture and depth of the spaces.

Beyond finishes, the project integrates functional optimizations and an interior rehabilitation strategy: the reconfiguration of wet rooms (including the addition of a new bathroom), optimized circulation flows, relocating living areas toward the south and bedrooms to the northern facade, thermal efficiency upgrades for floor slabs, underfloor heating, VRV climate control, heat recovery ventilation, and smart-home monitoring systems.

Thus, the house is neither restored as a static object nor replaced with a completely new interior. It is read, cleaned, reinterpreted, and brought into the present.

MEMORY / MATTER is about this continuity: memory remains within matter, and matter becomes the support for a new form of living.