In February 2002, a new coffee-shop appeared in the old area of the capital. Grand Café Amsterdam, on which we will try an architectural approach, is situated at the ground and first floor of a wholly re-discovered Bucharest building. A structural, geometrical, volumetric re-discovery, program and, not in the least, investment. The building, situated at the intersection Covaci with Soarelui streets, is composed of two major components: Grand Café Amsterdam and The HQ of the DC Communication company. The companies live and coexist happily in the basement, ground floor, first floor and respectively the mansard of the building. Including a bar, a Grand Café and a restaurant as well as a series of working spaces, offices and meeting halls admirably placed in the building's mansard. In this place, where two communities meet: traditional and illegal (by the social unyieldingness of abusive inhabitants) the perennial vocation arrangement of the dwelling Grand Café Amsterdam has the quality to generate a space where the new is discovered beforehand.
PROIECT: RE-ACT NOW STUDIO
TEXT: ARH. FRANCOISE PAMFIL
FOTO: MIHAI RAICU

If once the attic was an appendix-space, used for storage, and the garret figured as a minimally livable area, of compromise, the modernism transforms the space underneath the roof in a star, in a fashionable place to live, in the favorite area. The pleasure of living in the garret derives, complementary to the satisfaction that an improper space has been skillfully recovered, from the undiscovered character of the configuration of the respective interior. The interventions supervened consisted in construction yard specific work ? wall cleaning and reconditioning, restoration and optimization of installations, efficient thermal isolation and built compartmenting ? molded on the references set by the project of functional arrangement and organization. The unitary character rules over the apartment?s atmosphere: the manner of dealing with the utility sectors, and particularly with the textural and chromatic homogeneity. The painting of the walls is entirely white, the doors, the window frames, the wooden beams and the laminated parquet display the same red-brown, and the furniture pieces combine coherently expressive nuances of cherry tree and mahogany for the same type of veneer.
TEXT: ARH. EVA ROSETTI
FOTO: MIHAI RAICU

"My father was a carrier officer and is coming from the famous Carp family. My mother is the descendant of Lascar Catargiu, former prime minister in the time of King Carol I. I have been into war in the East and in the West, I have been wounded, I have been decorated, I have been kicked out of the army by the communists, as a reward? Then I even went to prison where I have spent four months in the fall of 1947, I escaped abroad, clandestine, of course, in 1948, in January. I lived in Austria for a while, then, with a special visa I got to America, where, as I said before, I was the chief of the Romanian Service of Voice of America until I returned to Europe and undertook the position of vice-director of Free Europe?.When I was very young, there were two arteries in Bucharest that were of crucial importance to us: Calea Victoriei and Elisabeta Boulevard. On Calea Victoriei was what in Ardeal was called a corso, it was the walking spot between eleven and one and between six and eight in the evening. On Calea Victoriei, however, were walking the more mature people, beautiful, elegant ladies, officers, civilians, all very nicely dressed. We, the youth, walked up and down on Elisabeta Boulevard, from the corner with Calea Victoriei down to Cismigiu. This was our walk, only on the side of the movie theaters, fewer people walking on the other side. You might ask me why. I don?t know. That was tradition, that's the way everybody walked. There were the cinemas, and if I'm not wrong, they were four or five: Arpa, Capitol, there was Trianon? These were cinemas frequented by everybody, particularly the young. There was a place, almost a restaurant, Tic-Tac was the name of it, where the young would also go, there were the best pâ´©s with cheese, meat and beer. The palinca, the strong drinks were consumed much more rarely among the youth. And whisky existed only in certain bars, of the great hotels."