Simona Pribeagu
Architect

There was a small existing house on the plot, almost disappearing in the middle of a fruit and vegetable garden. A paradise.

The garden was left as it was, only the house was replaced by a new one: One single floor, all rooms connected to the outside - a garden house. Or just a typical Romanian rural house, attached to its ground.

The existing house was a traditional „casa wagon“ – a linear narrow volume along the border of the plot.  The new design doubles up the old one: two narrow volumes house kitchen, sleeping rooms, office and lavatories.  Between them lies a central living space that opens with big windows to both the front and the back garden. It is a kind of space that is not known in Romanian traditional architecture: A garden room, a space for contemplation and leisure. Connecting inside and outside, but also traditional and modern life.

How can you build a solid and beautiful house, being limited to the catalogue of mainstream products and materials from the DIY-Store?

The use of colour, façade texturing and proportioning are employed to reinterpret traditional motives in a playful way. In this way the house establishes a connection to history and spirit of the site. It also awakes the clients’ memories of their own youth in idyllic rural places.