View from the top end
Setback rows of flats, sharp edges and curved exteriors make the new apartment project Evocasa Selecta on Bucharest’s central-east Boulevard Ferdinand appear to be a warped cruise liner negotiating a tumbledown landscape in the Romanian capital
September 2010 - From the Print Edition
Designed by Radu-Petre Nastase (Adest Architecture and Equator European Architects) and developed by Adama Management, this is a starkly original phenomenon in an architecturally conservative city. Inside, each apartment is different in size and qualities – some have small balconies, others have giant outside areas able to hold grand receptions, one of which is formed into the shape of a poop-deck, with views onto the Parliament Palace, the industrial chimneys of the south and the glass and steel offices of the north.
“This is for people who see the city as an extension of their residence,” says Radu-Petre Nastase.
There are 79 apartments, with two to four rooms, each over a surface area of 60 to 310 sqm and with 12,500 sqm in total on Blvd Ferdinand.
There are eight apartments per floor and the costs range from 112,000 to 280,000 Euro plus VAT. These flats target internationally-minded Romanians and the expat community looking for a central location. The kitchens are not huge and many are open-plan.
The developers bought the land with an Urban Development Plan (PUD) from local council Sector 2 already in place. This restricted the construction to four floors only – the height of many of the surrounding buildings which date from the 1930s. However to maximise the plot of land, there are six further floors of apartments set back from the main road.
But what distinguishes the building from most of Bucharest’s other blocks of steel, glass and concrete is its curved shape, which follows the contours of the public square.
“Most developers demand 80 per cent footprint to optimise their investment,” says Nastase. This is a rare example in Romania of a developer allowing the final vision to take precedence over the bottom line.
Originally, the Ferdinand Evocasa Selecta project was divided into two and three bedroom apartments, but this has changed in the last three years. Now many of these have been realigned into one and two bedrooms.
“At the end of 2008 it was clear that there was a greater demand for one and two bedroom apartments than for three,” says Nastase. “Before 2008, a new couple would purchase a three-bedroom apartment in anticipation that they would have have two or three children.”
In Romania what is lacking is the mobility of home-buyers. There is no ‘property ladder’ and more of a ‘property footstool’, where a couple makes one housing purchase for life.
But this appears to be changing. “Now more people are buying the correct number of bedrooms that suit their current style of living,” says Nastase.
Around 50 per cent of clients soliciting a flat in Evocasa Selecta wanted a one bedroom space. A lack of cash means that new buyers have had to downscale their appetite, but the need for new accommodation still exists. “Buyers in Ferdinand project want ‘independence’, but not size,” says Nastase. “They do not want to have to live with their parents anymore.”
Bucharest is one of the densest cities in the EU’s east and rivals Paris in the number of residents per sqm of land – space should therefore be at a premium, yet between 2003 and 2008 buyers were looking at square-metres as the chief motivating factor in making purchasing decisions. Nastase argues that the fetishising of size in apartments is over and buyers have a more realistic attitude to housing purchases – where they are looking for a central location and proximity to their work, over the need to boast a 200 sqm space.
In the future, Nastase expects young marrieds to expand their style of living, from flats to larger flats to houses, as they grow older and their family grows larger – a pattern which exists in the west, but is yet to be experienced in Bucharest.
Some of the apartments – although only having three bedrooms – have two bathrooms. “In Romania luxury buyers of housing are looking for two bedrooms and two bathrooms,” says Nastase.
Currently a fashionable trend in urban apartments in the west is the idea of floor to ceiling windows – first pioneered by Mies Van der Rohe in his Barcelona Pavilion in the 1920s. This has not yet caught on in Bucharest, but Evocasa Selecta prizes its large numbers of windows beating a steady rhythm along every floor. “Buyers do not need big apartments because the city comes into the space with all these openings and expands the apartment due to the views,” says the architect.
The plan for the next 20 to 30 years is to build up whole plaza where Evocasa Selecta stands. At present this is low level housing area with buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Romania’s development tends to be less comprehensive in this area. Each age has left its mark. Almost every house behind the project samples from a different age – including the Brancovenesque, a mock-baroque from the 19th century, modernist 1930s and brutalist Communist. Between one and five floors, the buildings do not cohere with one another, and some face the road, while others are set back with a courtyard. “Architecturally, the area is in a constant state of regeneration,” says Nastase.
Report by Michael Bird
