The building is located in the old city center of Bucharest and has had a long and intricate history. Built in the 19th century, it started out as a bank and then it became a clothing shop between the `50s and the `90s. In the past 20 years, after the clothing shop closed, the building became slowly a ruin, before it regained life as a bookstore. We saw it as a permanent shell and our intervention as a fragment in its history. Pieces of recent restorations were kept visible in our final design, the concrete walls in the basement and several components of outline beams, as an expression of the building?s continuous metamorphosis.

© Cosmin Dragomir

Architects: Square One

Location: Strada Lipscani 55, Bucure?ti, Romania
Architects In Charge: Adrian Cancer-Zeana, Sabin Dumitriu

Design Team: Ioan Vladescu, Vlad Cretu, Andrei Palita

Area: 1000.0 sqm

Project Year: 2015

Photographs: Cosmin Dragomir

Restoration : Capitel Avangarde

Structure : Pop & Asociatii

© Cosmin Dragomir

The building is located in the old city center of Bucharest and has had a long and intricate history. Built in the 19th century, it started out as a bank and then it became a clothing shop between the `50s and the `90s. In the past 20 years, after the clothing shop closed, the building bec...