Studio Dwelling in Bucharest. The Apartment of Architect Rudolf Fränkel

A Bucharest apartment-burou in Bucharest. The apartment

of the architect Rudolf Fränkel

text: Mihaela PELTEACU
photo: Daniela PUIA

The architect Rudolf Fränkel (1901-1974) had been in Romania for a short time when in 1933 he accepted a commission from the lawyer Edmond Roth to renovate a small building in the center of the capital.
The building still stands today in Bucharest, at 8A George Enescu Street. It is a discreet building, with two distinct registers, a commercial ground floor above which rise residential apartments on three levels. The building occupies the entire street opening of an irregular lot narrower towards the rear. New materials added in recent decades are slowly suffocating the original body, but they still fail to conceal from the discerning eye the careful crafting of a modernist living space.
Eva and Rudolf Fränkel lived and worked for a time in the apartment on the top floor of this building.

In 1933, Rudolf Fränkel arrived in Romania after a decade of high-level professional practice in the effervescent artistic context of Berlin during the Weimar Republic; he had already, since the 1920s, realized a large-scale urban project, the Lichtburg housing estate known as the Garden City ^Atlantic1, and with the Lichtenberg Cinematheque, then the largest urban-scale lighting project in Germany, he had brought architecture for mass entertainment "into an ethereal zone where the distinction between fantasy and mysticism, commercialism and idealism" was ^blurred2. It was the year in which, under the influence of Eric Mendelsohn's ideas, he built the Villa Stern in Breslau, a major landmark in his oeuvre, a crowning achievement of his constant preoccupation with finding the unique balance between the classical and the modern, between "a quasi-classical and very abstract sense of form and the modern sense of luxury"^3.

In this biographical context, the relatively modest building in Bucharest with which he debuted in Romanian architecture is significant and striking for its remarkable and subtle hybrid design, a meticulous exercise in the spatial declension of professional activity in the domestic space.

The design of the top-floor apartment was undoubtedly also an important calling card on arrival in Bucharest, an architectural experiment in which the association between profession and dwelling gives its occupants an aura of emancipation and freedom in keeping with the modern ideals of society and the architectural profession.

Initiated right from the street, the idea of the intersection between shared/public and domestic/private space stands out as an important preoccupation at all levels of the project's elaboration, juggling different nuances of intimacy or conviviality.

The public-private sequence is carefully constructed starting from the street, with access through the left beam, under a semi-cylindrical volume-indoor, which covers and marks at ground floor level a more private space compared to the other half, which is commercial (fig. 1).

The double entrance door, with side panels, is fitted with translucent glass and leads into a semicircular passageway, which gradually transitions from the street to the private atmosphere.

An air of interior urbanity surprises the first-time visitor: conceived as a winding street, the access space encourages exploration and social interaction. This passage provides the entrance to the employees of the shop on the ground floor, as well as access to other related spaces: basement, ancillary services, etc. (fig. 2, fig. 3, fig. 4)

As one progresses deeper into the passage, the light coming in from the street gradually fades, giving way to another light, filtered through the translucent glass of the curved wall of the stairwell. The change of atmosphere marks the entry into a more private area and the invitation to continue, by stairs or elevator, the vertical route to the apartments (fig. 5, fig. 6). Through this access device, the theme of circularity initially proposed in the façade is continued and, moreover, complicated by the extension of the urban route inside; the presence of circular light boxes joins the elements that emphasize this sensation.

For the interior organization of the apartment, the architect initially uses corrective figures in relation to the irregular shape of the plot and divides the entire surface into horizontal strips of different sizes, subdivided in turn into a series of connected rooms.

In relation to the program, this organization ensures a spatial-functional distribution suitable for the expected simultaneity of private and professional activities (employees working, receiving clients, discussions, etc.) (fig. 7).
The programmatic ambiguity is first initiated by noticing domestic activities that do not require the same degree of privacy (e.g. bedroom vs. living room) and resorting to a spatial strategy in which the central distribution hallway appears as a key element, negotiating and keeping at a distance the different functions it distributes (directly - workspace and bedroom with en-suite bathroom, or indirectly - kitchen and dining area).
Seen through the prism of its use, the studio apartment presents itself as a hybrid structure, a micro-network of connected rooms, born from an archetypal typology of organizing the plan around a central distribution space.
In today's increasingly careful revisiting of traditional models, the current interest in archetypal typologies considered by many contemporary architects as an important field of research in the field of collective housing (particularly in Swiss housing architecture) should be emphasized and developed in future research. In resonance with a comment by the architect Roger Diener, the uncertain status of the central distribution room makes it appear all the more important to us in relation to what it actually is, insofar as through this room the whole apartment is experienced; indeed, the whole building of which it is a part4.
The generous size of the distribution room allows it to be furnished and, depending on need, it can switch from serving space to living space. In the spirit of the total art that enlivened the turn of the century, Fränkel designed the apartment's furnishings in their entirety, conceiving different uses for each area, freestanding pieces or furniture that merges with the walls.

In the case of the central distribution room, the architect's furnishings confirm the qualities noted above: the role of distribution and the qualities of a habitable space, preserving the servant character without replacing the major rooms of the house. A bar for keeping and serving drinks and a corner for relaxing and chatting are enough to give the distribution hall a convivial atmosphere; the indirect light coming through the glasvand emphasizes this transitory character (fig.8).

The central hallway largely determines the private spaces it distributes. In this case, for the bedroom, the difficulty is solved by the airlock that mediates between the common space and the private space, and in the case of the kitchen, the entrance vestibule mediates in a similar way (the kitchen being accessible only through the entrance vestibule or from the dining area). The shared space comprises two areas that can function either together or separately: (1) the study room with work desks for employees and shelving for storage (Fig. 9) and (2) the boudoir room - furnished with a circular table - which can be used as a place for professional discussions (reception/visit room) or as a family living room when necessary. (fig. 10)
The two areas can be visually connected or disconnected by a curtain. However, in either case, the different shaping of the outer wall in front of the bay window produces a different reading register and emphasizes their separate perception. (fig. 11)
The concern to blur the continuity-discontinuity opposition is evident here: if changing the shape of the wall emphasizes the discontinuity of the rooms, the option of connecting them along the outer wall ensures their continuous perception, the two spaces flowing into each other along the façade and emphasizing the glazed curvature of the bay window.

In the same vein, the windows, which are similar and arranged in both rooms towards the outer face of the wall, are part of the same theme of the continuity of the two spaces. The proportion, which is indecisive rather than a denial of verticality in the spirit of modernist dogma, and the way they are arranged keep the streetscape at a distance. The result is the sensation of a centripetal space, in constant search of its intimate universe, while at the same time open to the universal concerns of the profession. The archetypal plane undergoes transformations and is transformed into a hybrid space, guiding the lifestyle of its occupants.
While giving due respect to private space and family intimacy, the Fränkel's studio apartment is a demonstration of the realization that living and working/creating are important and defining activities in the life of any human being.
The building's unostentatious exterior and the concentration of all the wealth of ideation in the design of the interior space can be deciphered in the same key of hybrid design of the architecture of the dwelling. It is no coincidence that the building still today houses offices of private companies alongside the apartments.

NOTES

1 In German, Gardenstadt Atlantic, the mixed residential and leisure complex comprises 800 apartments, shops and community spaces. It was restored and declared a historic monument in 1995.
2 James-Chakraborty, Kathleen, German Architecture for a Mass Audience, Routledge, 2000, p. 70.
3 Frampton, Kenneth, 'Rudolf Fränkel', in Brown-Manrique, Gerardo, Rudolf Fränkel and Neues Bauen. Work in Germany, Romania and the United Kingdom, Wasmuth, 2009, p. 9.
4 Roger Diener, Faces, No 28, 1993, p. 8.

Bibliography

BROWN-MANRIQUE, Gerardo, Rudolf Fränkel and Neues Bauen: Work in Germany, Romania and the United Kingdom, Wasmuth, 2009
CRITICOS, Mihaela, Art deco sau modernismul bine temperat, Simetria, 2009
JAMES-CHAKRABORTY, Kathleen, German Architecture for a Mass Audience, Routledge, 2000
MACHEDON, Luminița & SCOFFHAM, Ernie, Romanian Modernism, the architecture of Bucharest, The MIT Press, London, England, 1999

SUMARUL REVISTEI ARHITECTURA, NR.6/2018
THE "NEW" PARADIGM OF HOUSING