The apartment in the pictures is located in one of the standard blocks of flats of a well-known Bucharest neighbourhood raised before December 1989. It was initially conceived to illustrate what was then summed up by the syntagm "4-room apartment", namely: three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and the afferent utilitarian spaces (regulated by the same minimal criteria, themselves). Now the apartment was remodelled in order to answer the functional needs of a modern 3-person family: kitchen, dining area, living, matrimonial bedroom and children's room.
PROIECT: TWINS DESIGN
TEXT: CRISTINA GRAUR
FOTO: ARH. MIHAI RAICU

A boyar's house located in downtown Bucharest, a company decided to build for itself an image adequate to its economic status and a lot of open-mindedness form the parties involved, this is, in a nutshell, the office-rearranging formula we propose today. But, beyond this extreme simplification, quite some interesting elements are hidden, as the general space and context are not exactly ordinary, thus raising a few specific problems. The building, raised in the eclectic style of the era, teaming together varied stylistic elements, had most of the features found at the buildings of that time: a combination of styles with a hint of classicism, on the outside and also in dealing with the interior space, as well as a spatial division minding criteria that seem very strange nowadays. The initial renovation, done strictly for increasing its selling price, without any preoccupation for the value of the interior space, fortunately almost did not ruin any of the house's precious features " or at least this is what we imagine, the original aspect of the house being buried under decades of various uses that were not always in conformity with the initial purpose.
PROIECT: FAB GROUP ASSOCIATES; ARH. BRUNO ANDRESOIU
FOTO: ARH. MIHAI RAICU

"I will tell you another story that, perhaps, few people know. Alexandru Ipsilanti was part of that first series of Fanariots who wanted to Occidentalize Bucharest. Among others, he had some kind of idiosyncrasy towards the Constantinopolitan exterior aspect of the houses with "cicmalele" (closed balconies). Ceausescu was not the first to decide against the closed balconies, but Ipsilanti, and I have documents from the period when Ban Balaceanu wanted to build houses for himself on the Mogosoaia Bridge, across the street from the present location of the Social Dialog Group. When he built his house, he wanted a nice occidental type balcony, but you must know that even then, there were certain negative, intriguing informers who sent a complaint to the Ruler: "take notice that the Ban is building a house with a closed balcony". They went there, the divan's boyars with the city's architects, to see what kind of balcony it was. In the end, it was acknowledged, in the first place, that it was a European balcony. Then, it was high enough to allow the passage of the carriages, and its water drains were built in such manner so that the water did not fall on the pedestrians' heads. They were preoccupied with urbanism ever since then". "Some interesting urban objects that disappeared are the fountains. Even this street, whose present name is Orlando, used to be called Putul de Piatra (the Stone Well), because there was a large well in front of the house. The fountain was some sort of an urbanism obsession we borrowed from Istanbul. Constantinople was full of fountains. It was decoration and necessity. There were two reasons for the presence of water: first, for supplying, and then, for fire fighting".