CRUX
A center for new beginnings
The Romanian Order of Architects, together with the City Hall of Bucharest’s Sector 1, launched a competition to partially transform the function of the building at 13 Amzei Street, formerly the local Tax and Revenue Office.
The goal is to turn the area into a hub for the creative industries, drawing pedestrian flow from Calea Victoriei and offering a cultural refuge within the city.
At the same time, the project aims to revitalize the neighborhood and support Romanian artists and artisans, encouraging local creation and craftsmanship to flourish in the heart of Bucharest.
OUR PROPOSAL
We have always been drawn to buildings that preserve in their plan a simple, recognizable shape, yet one loaded with meaning.
Here, in Piața Amzei, that shape is a cross. A clear, symmetrical geometry, drawn with interwar rigor, within a massive Art Deco architecture that is now searching for a new voice.
We named the project CRUX. Not as a metaphor, but as a statement of fact.
Crux means point of intersection, center, crossroads. The place where lines meet.
This building is exactly that — in the form composed by its changing spaces, in the position it occupies, in the silence that has wrapped it in recent years.
We asked ourselves what a beginning means. What it means to let something be reborn without erasing its memory.
We decided not to add too much. We felt it wasn’t necessary.
We cleaned. We simplified. We let the light in.
We searched for a balance between empty and full, between silence and potential.
The resulting space is almost entirely white. Not as an aesthetic statement, but as an invitation.
A neutral, non-confrontational place that doesn’t dictate what should be done, but allows it.
A calm stage where unexpected things can unfold.
In counterpoint to the rigor of the building, we introduced a new volume.
A light, airy object, built from a thin metal structure.
It is another cross, but irregular, permissive, fragmentary.
It has an uncertain presence — it is seen and not seen.
Its translucent surface reflects daylight, but also those who use it.
We wanted this element to have no predetermined function.
It can be a pedestal, a seat, a planter, a tribune.
It can be gathered or scattered, it can support or define.
It is a possible beginning, just like all beginnings: imprecise, yet charged with energy.
CRUX does not seek to impress.
It seeks to offer calm. A backdrop. A structure that can support creation without conditioning it.
An architecture that does not seek attention, but allows the natural unfolding of things.
