The churches of Campulung are numerous, glorious and ancient, for God has bestowed His grace upon this tiny piece of land. These are small stone churches with their old mural paintings, founded by the rulers of old and built by the unpaired
craftsmen of Campulung.

All are worth talking about. Let us mention the Domneasca church, founded by the lady Chiajna and her son. Petru the Young, in 1567, the Schei church, burnt by the Ottomans and rebuilt later, after the plans of architect D.I. Berechet, the Marina church, built over an old small structure without towers, where fragments of the old frescoes are still visible, or the church of St George, with its lively illustration of the parabol of the beggar Lazarus.

Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, the mayor of Madrid, started a habitation program in 2000, meant for increasing the population density and for adding quality to the developing area bordering the historical centre of the city. The dutch office of MVRDV, who revolutionized the concept of collective dwelling during the last few years, was amongst those sellected to take part in this program. Their proposed project, the Mirador Tower, occupies a surface of 23 000 square metres, includes 157 flats and an inner courtyard situated at a great height, covering a surface of 580 square metres. It instantly became a symbol of the area, a manifesto of diversity and of life quality.

The tower offers an open space that is necessary in any modern city. The huge hollow situted 40 metres above the ground offers the inhabitants and their neighbours a garden and a public space where they can contemplate the city and the horizon. Through solutions such as this one, domestic architecture is opening up towards the
new urban medium and its environment.

Piata Victoriei, the fastest developing area of Bucharest, concerning the number of built structures, is gradually becoming a lifesize gallery of contemporary architecture, where the main exhibits are the buildings projected by Westfourth Architecture. The latest architectural volume whose presence marks the area is the Premium Plaza building, situated at the intersection between Nicolae Titulescu Bvd. and Dr. Iacob Felix St.

It takes more than a few words to describe the building; it is different depeding on where the viewer is standing - the main facade is plane, covered with glass, with discontinuous vertical lines, forming a uniform structure towards Piata Victoriei,
a facade with pronounced vertical lines towards Nicolae Titulescu blvd, facades with a full aspect.

A graduate of the University "Ion Mincu", the architect left Romania for New York at the end of the '70s and worked in the field of business architecture. He returned to Bucharest after 1990 and started his own architectural office, working on a number of large scale projects, marking key-points of the urban space.

"I became a student in 1970, I graduated in 1976 and two years later I left for New York. To me, the shock was enormous, especially at a visual and cultural level, because I was coming from a completely censored world. There is a huge difference between visiting a city and living there."