#RENOVATION #MIXED-USE #INTERACTION #TRANSPARENCY
Re-Act Now: www.re-act-now.ro
What could we do in the context of revitalizing architecture to keep a more vivid picture of an old building with (even partial) special features? It is a question to which we can respond in two ways. The valuable part the special one will be restored and the unworthy one we rebuild, complete, emphasize in a first solution absolutely in the same stylistic story as the old valuable one, or we dress it in a second solution in a completely new concept in major contrast with the existing situation.
We chose the second solution, first because the challenge that came with it was more entitled in the context of Bucharest where such approaches are lacking, but also because the new functions that the house needed were based on a great flexibility and a general transparency, things to which the first version could not answer.
The existing building was drawn at its origins by an Italian architect in trend in the architectural Romanian culture at the end of XIX century and beginning of XX century, named Giulio Magni.
This building the former goods exchange is part of the Ensemble Customs Goods Exchange Warehouses and is the most in the street and the most coquette of the houses belonging to it. Its high state of degradation in which it was when our design approach started, resulted from the fact that for many years it was unused and therefore untaken care of in any way. In this context a ready-made additional affection was called upon us considering the approach of details and themethodology for the recovery of the valuable fund.
The story we offered to the new house from the former Goods Exchange actually lives in small the story of a fair on a spice way where the nostalgical past is framed by the anarchic context of the sincerity and simplicity of technically virgin beauty. The new building has become a sensitive white-black phrase. The Human transcends ambiguous states when meeting the place, the neighborhood, the people, the local memories already known or hardly foreseen…
CREDITS
Architects: Re-Act Now | Mario Kuibus
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Surface: 3000 sqm
Year/Status: 2008 / completed
Project Team: Mario Kuibus, Roxana Dumitriu, Irina Plesnila, Cristina Chivu, Elena Toader, Adela Antoniu, Valentin Varlan
Client/Contractors: The Ark
Partner/Consultants:
Structure: Mc Design Construct, Caza Impel | Mechanical and electrical engineering: Damiro Engineering, Ams Install | Historical survey: Quattro Design
Photography: Andrei Margulescu
