Stirbey Center

This complex (of 57,000 square meters) composed by an office building, a five-star hotel, a shopping mall and luxury apartments is situated in city centre, on the most ancient shopping street of Bucharest. The oldest still standing, princely palace, built at the beginning of the XIXth century by the French architect Michel Sanjouand (then architect-in-chief of the city) for the ruling prince Stirbey, serves as entrance pavilion. Indeed, the stake was to reconcile the rather modest scale of this historical building and that of the 16 levels buildings of the new complex. The two high-rise buildings (the office building in the foreground and the hotel building in the corner of the main street) are imagined as a case surrounding and protecting the ancient palace. These two tours are rising from the black granite base of a two levels shopping mall, developed around a central atrium, a wing of which is formed by the ancient palace. The cornice of this base prolongs that of the palace, which is inlayed in this mineral shell. Behind, by a street boarded with ancient dwellings reminding us the atmosphere of the ancient city, a 5-levels building composed by stacked prisms (which the split-up volumes is in dialogue with the nearby buildings) contains luxury housing with generous south-oriented terraces.