Architecture is (no longer) necessarily a matter that only has to do with materials and materiality, with gravitational and seismic forces, with longevity and durability. James Slade and hayes Slade operate with such concepts: with the elusive, deceitful and fluctuant fashion; with technology, with virtual spaces that end up to determine real ones; with spontaneous requirements that transform the architecture object into a chameleon that invades the public space in order to transform it into a private space ant the other way around.
Proiecte: Slade Architecture
Text: Ioana Paunescu
Foto: NIA, Woo Il Kim, Jordi Miralles, Ken Hayden

We deal with a rearranging signed by the architects from Graphic Studio, already well-known "handlers" of the built patrimony of the capital, a difficult and quite controversial field.
The building from 1936, rather eclectic with strong modernist accents than modernist in the true meaning of the word, was potentiated and was given value by closely followed interventions: the roundness of the volumes were emphasized, increasing the building's impact locally, the geometrics of the facade were also accentuated, removing thus any kind of ornament on the exterior, and the light was allowed to enter abundantly inside by sistematically cultivating the transparency.
Proiect: Sc Graphic Studio SRL (Remus Harsan, Dragos Perju, Karoly Nemes)
Proiectant structuri: Andrei Zybaczynski
Text: Viorica Buica
Foto: Serban Bonciocat

"master Dragomir, son of abbot Dragomir, made this bell in the year 6893, indiction 8, during the time(s) of the faithfull lord Io Dan Voievod". The years are counted ever since the beginning of time, but, in normal years, it's 1285, and the bell bearing this inscription belongs to the Cotmeana monastery church, a patrimonial object deeply involved into the hypothesis regarding the year in which the church was built, but also into a melodramatic story dated in the World War I.
Text: Luiza Zamora
Foto: Serban Bonciocat

Even if the modern world lacks miracles and people no longer know the feeling of antique amazement, a designer who wants to change the world and a big local mogul, a great art collector created a "suspended garden" at 350 meters above the sea level, above the humidity and the smog that gave Athens the fame of a such polluted city.
Proiect interior: Karim Rashid
Text: Luiza Zamora
Foto: www.designhotels.com