A Corner Solution in Bucharest: Aaron Florian Apartment House by ADNBA

Strada Aaron Florian is a quiet cul-de-sac in the north of Bucharest’s inner city. It is difficult to recognize any orderly structure to the block here, as it is in the neighbouring districts. Most of the houses were conceived as solitaires and arranged loosely along the street. The heights of their eaves have little to do with each other.

Nevertheless, broad stretches produce the image of a typical southern European city with many closed-off street spaces. This is just what the ADNBA architecture studio wanted to recreate with their new five-storey apartment building. The irregularly cut plot of land and the line of the street, which curves just in front of the plot, required an unconventional solution.

The imposing, white-plastered structure seems to float above the glazed ground floor. The first upper storey is where the façade most closely follows the line of the street. Above that, each level the building recedes a bit more in order to allow more daylight into the street-level space. The recesses cannot be used as terraces; only one loggia on each floor opens onto the street.

At ground level, the architects have made space for a retail space and a small three-room apartment that opens onto a rear-facing inner courtyard. The three floors above have three three-room apartments each; the top storey is home to two penthouse apartments which nominally have three rooms as well, but are actually significantly more generous than the others as each of them features a large living/dining area and two terraces, one at the entry level and one on the flat roof.