In the Romanian art there is a sculpture representing the face of young woman, with the cheek vigorously modeled, betraying a strong personality. It is the work of Fritz Storck and it represents his wife, painter Cecilia Cutescu-Storck, in an evocation full of sensitivity and poetry. The spirit of the two artists lives, still, in a house from the old Bucharest, the Frederic and Cecilia Cutescu-Storck Museum. Built in 1912-1913 by architect Alexandru Clavel, the building hosts an impressive collection of works of art (2400 works!), belonging to the Storck family: the three sculptors, Karl, Carol and Frederic, the painter Cecilia Cutescu-Storck and her daughter, the ceramist Cecilia Storck-Botez. Conceived in an Anglo-Normand neogetic style (the Modern Style version, with influences from the ‘domestic’ architecture of Philip Webb), the building has its façades decorated with apparently wooden beams, with rope moulding girdles, jambs and bas relieves of stone, sculpted by Frederic Storck. The yard and garden of the museum cover a surface of approximately 3000sqm, with tree plantations, colon fragments, metopes, chapiters and statues made of marble or stone, brought from Balcic or sculpted by Karl Storck.
TEXT: SIMONA NASTAC
FOTO: GEORGE VASILACHE

The house is located in the vicinity of the Opera Park. It benefits, however, of the quietness offered by its placement on an ‘entry’. Though it is a rented residence – and implicitly does not support major volumetric interventions – the personalization of the spaces is significantly acquired through the interiors. The fitting up of the house is made from the inside. Ms. Helene Maumy-Florescu, professionally an illustrationist and graphic designer, who works presently with interior arrangements, lives in an immobile with the family. The ground floor contains the day area, and the first floor is the bedroom area. The concatenation of the rooms is ordained on the ground floor towards two possible routes: both entry, living and dinning or living, and then the stair to the second floor. The crossing of the living room, instead of being an element of discomfort becomes a subject for furnishing. The dinning area is ample. A generous table has for a perspective end an Art-Deco mirror. The table’s chairs are covered with white covers which seem to neutralize their spatial presence. This five-cornered space (sign of a former heater) is correlated with the kitchen through a lock where another dinning space was arranged, more intimate, for breakfast.
PROIECT: HELENE MAUMY-FLORESCU
FOTO: SERBAN BONCIOCAT
TEXT: FRANÇOISE PAMFIL

I have discovered a comfortable, balanced and harmonious space – a residence. Its substance consists in the living, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and an access area. The space is fluent and open. The height underneath the ceiling is of 4m. The old crude iron colons that support the bridging on the metal beams are kept. The soffit of the bridging is of coffered tin. The installation ducts are unmasked. The float highly over the space almost dematerializing visually. Their memory and presence is white. There are no doors between the functions of the day area nor is there one to the bedroom. That’s why, space has the qualities of a body surprising through balance. An exclusively orthogonal geometry, Cartesian, sends the attention to the materials, textures and colors.
PROIECT: VLAD ARSENE, ZZING LEE - WESTFOURTH ARCHITECTURE PC, NEW YORK
TEXT: FRANÇOISE PAMFIL
FOTO: BJORG PHOTOGRAPHY

Shortly after the announcing of the result from the ‘Nation’s Cathedral solution contest’, I requested of Conf. Dr. Arch. Augustin Ioan, the coordinator of the team that signs the winning project, a meeting. The discussion followed the context in which the contest theme came to be, it’s necessity as well as the architecture object proposed. ‘It is a matter of context. It is a project whose theme is over 100 years old; it has been offered to Mincu and it is nice what Prof. Dr. Anca Bratuleanu has said, recently, in an anniversary context: ‘if Mincu didn’t do it, then at least the University bearing his name do it’. And it’s a serious project. There are two possible attitudes: you either sabotage it, as in the good tradition of a ‘bonjour-ist’ intelectualism, or you want to discuss reasonably. And there have been a lot of discussions after ’90: it was said ‘no’ for the Carol Park, due to reasons of historical site, an argument which seems quite weak to me. There were also architectural arguments, referring to the most important façade, the north façade, which was always shaded. Here, the Church agreed on giving up on that point. Please believe me that the change could have been obtained. Some alternatives were hilarious, others insulting: a garbage dump in the Tineretului Park has been offered. It’s impossible, it’s mockery! Then an available location has been suggested, but one that was related to a different program: the reconstruction of the Mihai Voda church or Vacarestilor, which do not, however, replace the Patriarchal Cathedral, which must definitely be in the center.