Architecture & Engineering
We cover the whole course of a building project under one roof: from technical due diligence and concept, to permitting, construction details and site supervision. We combine engineering rigour with efficient, sustainable design — with experience delivering BREEAM Outstanding certified buildings — without ever sacrificing architecture you can truly experience as a user.
A construction project runs through dozens of technical decisions that depend on one another, and most of the trouble on site appears exactly where two disciplines meet. That is why we work as a general design office: architecture, structure, building services, fire safety and interior design are coordinated under one roof, from the first sketches to handover. The client has a single point of contact and a single set of documents that actually agree with each other.
What general design covers, stage by stage
The full process usually begins before the concept. We assess the site or the existing building through a technical due diligence, check what the planning framework allows and translate the investor's brief into realistic areas, flows and budgets. Then come the concept and the feasibility study, the documentation for approvals and for the building permit, the technical design and the construction details, followed by technical assistance throughout the works. Every stage is conceived as preparation for the next one, not as an isolated deliverable.
Structure and building services from concept
Engineering is not a service added at the end. Structure and building services enter the conversation during concept design, because the geometry of the building, its spans, clear heights and technical routes are what later decide the cost and the quality of the space. We test solutions through calculation and simulation, coordinate the models across disciplines and resolve clashes on the drawing, where a correction costs hours rather than weeks of delay.
Experience across building programmes
Our experience covers programmes of very different difficulty: shopping centres and mixed-use schemes above 60,000 sqm, residential developments, hotels and student housing, public and cultural buildings, offices, healthcare spaces and heritage restoration. We have designed buildings certified BREEAM Outstanding and carried EU-funded projects from the feasibility study through to execution detail. As a result we understand both the demands of a private investor and the documentary rigour a public authority requires.
For the programmes where our experience runs deepest we describe the way we work separately: retail and shopping centres, residential, hospitality, and public and cultural buildings. Each has its own ground rules — visitor flows, tenant mix, operational requirements or public funding procedures — and deserves to be read on its own.
How the team of architects and engineers works
The team is made of architects, engineers and designers working together on the same project, rather than passing phases between offices. Documents go through an internal review before they reach the client or the authority, and on site the questions are answered by the same people who drew the solution.
Beyond compliance, what interests us is that the result should be a building you can genuinely live with as a user: daylight, correct orientation, clear circulation, shared spaces worth using. Efficiency planned early does not impoverish architecture, it makes it possible — a well-structured plan costs less and works better at the same time.
If you have a plot, an existing building or an investment brief and you want to know what can be built there, write to us. We discuss constraints before we discuss images.
Architecture programmes
Retail
A good shopping centre is a piece of city: retail, entertainment, food court, offices and housing held together by clear circulation, daylight and points of interest that invite you to walk. We design experiences rather than lettable area — in the extension of Arena Mall Bacău, from 42,000 to around 63,000 sqm, we added a theme park of some 10 hectares, terraces opening onto the lake and the city's first international chain hotel, for a flow of more than 3 million visitors a year. Our experience covers MegaMall Bucharest, Timișoara Shopping City, the City Park Mall Constanța extension, Primark stores in Romania, REWE concept stores in protected areas and conversions from 2,000 to over 20,000 sqm. GLA, tenant mix and budget are design inputs for us, and quality is decided in the details that never show up in a rendering.
Residential
Housing is the infrastructure of everyday life, so we design it as a complete system: apartments with correct orientation and good light, generous shared areas, kindergartens and services on the ground floor, a living relationship with the street and the neighbourhood. We start from the real profile of the resident and from the way the space will be lived in ten years from now, not only from the way it sells today. In our portfolio and on the drawing boards we have over 50,000 sqm of housing in Sector 6, a single-family neighbourhood near Bucharest, developments in Bacău, Lake House 2 and Lake House 3, office-to-residential conversions of around 60,000 sqm and the restoration of the Rosenthal house, awarded the Octav Doicescu Prize. Our role is to reconcile the investor's interest with that of the end user: efficiency planned early produces better architecture.
Hospitality
Hospitality lives equally on experience and on operation: a lobby that welcomes, restaurants and versatile function rooms, bedrooms with a character of their own and, behind them, back-of-house circuits calibrated to the minute. We design hotels, aparthotels, student and senior accommodation, restaurants and leisure venues as complex programmes wrapped in architecture with presence. Hotel Mercure Bacău, the city's first international chain hotel, integrated into a masterplan with retail and housing; Tuzla Airdrome Hotel, carried from an EU-funded feasibility study through to execution details; Unique Student Housing, certified BREEAM Outstanding; a residence for the elderly in Cluj and a theme park delivered together with Momentum Leisure. Architecture, building services, fire safety and interiors are coordinated in house, so that every decision is taken only once.
Public & Cultural
Public space and cultural buildings are the most democratic part of a city and the most honest measure of how civilised a society has become. We approach them through a careful reading of the context — historic stratigraphy, real patterns of use, community — with adjustments that come from the city rather than from formal preferences. Competitions are our laboratory: second prize in the international competition held by the Romanian Order of Architects for Victoria Square in Timișoara, Feroviarilor Park in Cluj (over 53,000 sqm), the Bamiyan Cultural Centre, Rulmentul Brașov, the Craiova Water Park. Alongside them, projects taken through permitting and construction: Săucești Cultural Centre, the Bucharest Cultural Pavilion, museum pavilions, the refurbishment of the British Council headquarters and the regeneration of the Tractorul industrial site. We work with authorities, engineers and communities, with the documentary rigour that EU funding requires, because the existing building stock is a resource.