Gold Tim Jewelry Store

This was our debut effort as architects working independently from the Design Institute. These indoor and outdoor arrangement works have been far from painless. On the one hand, it was challenging in functional terms, namely, to accommodate both the selling space and the jeweler’s workshop in a confined area. On the other hand, achieving an intervention in Alba Iulia Street – maybe the sole most important pedestrian and commercial street in the city, a true piece of Lipscani in the midst of Timisoara – was quite challenging. Please note that such a street lies in the reserve area of the Fortified Town and connects Libertatii Square, constructed in the XVIIIth century, with Victoriei (Operei) Square, constructed at the end of the XIXth and early XXth century, both of them pedestrian areas.

This place was formerly occupied by a small shoe store; however, the ground floor of this 19th-century house, propped by brick masonry, was transformed as early as the ’60s when the entire street facade was provided with pillars and beams of reinforced steel.

Instead of the existing transparency, the client requested that the structure facing the street be as armored as possible. A first "minimalist" version, which kept the selling space positioned to look toward the street, and the workshop, in the back, was not to the client’s liking, particularly on functional grounds. What the client wanted was another relation between the selling space area and the workshop, in favor of the latter. Thus, a deep, more intimate selling space took shape, also enabling a separation of the manager’s office from the large workshop area.

We have preferred, together with the client, to identify a solution that would escape and contrast with the surrounding anonymity, instead of an approximate reiteration of the former ground floor or a pathetic historical pastiche.

TEAM

AWARDS

Andreescu and Gaivoronschi
associated architects

Piata Sfantu Gheorghe no 4, ap 10 Timisoara
tel +40 256 306042