The project unfolds the transformation of an unfinished house, designed for a stag, into a home for a young family. The former’s brief revolved around a one-bedroom house with functions such as a gym and a small spa while the latter’s brief aimed at morphing the fitness spaces into children's and guests’ bedrooms.
The challenge was to propose a type of intervention that reduces, through elimination, the existing structure to its volumetric essence and, later, to add functions and their corresponding volumes in the same spirit. The house thus becomes an 'apparatus' that mediates the transition from public space and public life to private space and private life being defined by its two main facades. The relation with the street is mediated through a facade dominated by a dent announcing the entrance... a ‘carved’ entrance with the purpose of announcing the warmth of the house. The relationship with the garden is mediated through a glazed facade that transforms the living room into an extension of the garden and vice versa.
This is achieved also through the furnishing concept: all fixed furniture elements (e.g. kitchen cabinets, panelled wall, bookshelves, office cabinets) are attached to the walls that lead towards the garden while the spaces in between are furnished with mobile furniture elements (e.g. sofa, armchair, dining table). The interiors thus revolve around the ample living room, a space that unfolds on two stories and thus intermediates the dialogue between the ground floor and the second floor as well as between the house and the garden. They are defined and dominated by large planes whose colors and textures drawn from the nature of the finishings: stone for the day ambients’ floors and bathroom walls, hardwood for the night ambients’ floors and doors and oak veneer for the pannelled wall and furniture. The 8 spherical luminaires composing the living room’s lighting scheme remind one of a park, underlining the blurred line between the garden and the home.
Design Team: Paul-Mihai Moldovan, Anamaria Moldovan, Florin-Vasile Lazar, Eszter Szoke, Gloria Gagu
Collaborator[s]: Mobila Florenta, Mobimpex, Smart Loft, Tur Project Invest
Design Year: 2014 - 2017
Status: Completed
Execution | Completion Year: 2017
Location: Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Gross area: 246 sqm
General Contractor: M.C.R. Invest S.R.L., Imperial Comex
Text: ateliercetrei
Photographer[s]: ateliercetrei, Ovidiu Micsa