[Martijn]

A big space defined by communist block of flats, urbanism for the 80, rigid and alienated. On the other side of the boulevard, a sea of houses.
A space crowded between important streets that are intersecting in a place known as Munci square. The plot that must be developed is right in the middle of this storm…
The site is very small and is considered almost unbuildable because of the complexity caused by the underground networks, the nearby gas station or even because of the access problem caused by the network of crowded streets.
Apparently a common brief, a common solution – an office tower.

read more on Archello.com http://www.archello.com/en/project/olympia-tower

photographer: Andrei Margulescu

 

[AndreiB]

Not quite a sea of houses... There are a few pre-war buildings in the area, but a small selection and mostly small apartment buildings. The dominant architecture in the area dates from the communist times.

The area has a negative reputation (at least in my mind) and generally looks unkempt and perhaps not the area for new office development. Access to transport infrastructure is excellent, however. The building does not impress me, however, and a lot of their description of how they made it fit into the environment seems to be "wishy-washy" architectural rhetoric without any real "meat" to the arguments. A more useful usage of the land in that area would have been for a transport interchange, in my opinion at least.