The site is located on Mătăsari Street, within a consolidated urban area of Bucharest, characterized by a mixed urban fabric with a predominantly residential character and complementary functions inserted at the ground floors of buildings. The area preserves the specificity of a traditional Bucharest neighborhood, defined by discontinuous street frontages, narrow plots, and a direct relationship between the built environment and the public street
The project configuration was shaped by a series of constraints specific to the site and its existing urban context. The main challenges identified concerned the limited size of the plot, the partially fragmented character of the surrounding built fabric, and the need to ensure optimal sunlight conditions both for neighboring buildings and for the proposed residential spaces.
The restricted site area required a careful approach to the functional and volumetric organization of the project, so that each built level could be used efficiently without compromising spatial quality. In this regard, the proposed solution aims to establish a clear distribution of functions and an optimization of circulation routes, while maintaining a balanced relationship between private and shared spaces. The concept seeks to articulate an architecture that mediates the relationship between housing, public space, and the surrounding built fabric, without losing the domestic character specific to the neighbourhood.
A key aspect of the design process was the management of the relationship between density and environmental comfort. The configuration of the volumes, the setbacks, and the positioning of openings were carefully studied in order to comply with sunlight and natural lighting requirements, both for the neighboring buildings and for the newly proposed residential units.
The materiality of the project is developed around the principles of tectonic expression and constructive honesty. The façade is organized into two distinct registers: a lower register in exposed brick, anchoring the building within the mineral and robust texture of the street, and an upper register finished in smooth white decorative plaster, lending the recessed volumes a lighter and more luminous expression.
The contrast between the two materials reinforces the compositional reading of the building and highlights the relationship between the base and the upper volumes. Through all these directions, the project proposes an architecture carefully calibrated to the contemporary realities of the city: dense yet permeable; urban yet domestic; expressive yet discreetly integrated into its context.
It is an intervention that seeks to transform the site’s limitations into a design resource and to offer a form of dwelling adapted to the current rhythm of Bucharest.