Probably the city of Brancusi contributed to an adjustment in the architectural language of our office. The residence received the Great Prize of the Bucharest Architecture Annual in 2005 and it is the first composition, that evades from the modernist fascination of the semicircle, being a construction made exclusively from straight angles.
Due to the houses privileged location, with the street façade to the North and the one from the backyard on the South, the house was envisioned as a “gateway-house”. The house unfolds on three levels in a perimetral opaque box and openes through a full/hollow ratio where the built accents get detached on a strongly glazed background and viceversa.
The transparency of the facades is done according to a necessary dosage of interior lighting, thus on the south facade, the most generous voids close the ground floors entry terrace and the dining room, the living room on the first floor with the bar area, while the office and the bedrooms from the last two floors are protected from the excess of light. The exterior stairase is very interesting, carried/folded around a solid wall, the entire composition |
becoming, through it`s priviledged position, an element of interest in the structure of the main facade.
The north facade, on the other hand, bypassed by the solar path, is in no need of important voids/glazed areas, hosting only utility rooms with poor value. The ratio is reversed, so the white, opaque plan occupies a larger surface than the glazed areas that margin the box on its three sides.
However, there is a tridimensional accent as well, the grafted balcony on the facade, as an exterior emanation of the hallway. The absolute opacity of the west facade is interrupted in a unique way by a transparent joint that climbs two levels and turns orthogonally untill it reaches the roof, managing to cast the light over the daytime area from the first floor and the office from above it. The chimney from the central heating plays an important compositional role in balancing the presence of the bow window from the opposite side facade.
A possible key to decipher this building – among the most successful projects done by the architect – is one of clear options, minimalist sculpture of luminous accents on the background of a dominant, white, solid wall.
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