Red Apple Apartment Building

Red Apple Apartment Building by Aedes Studio

Architects: Aedes Studio
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Year: 2013
Photographs: Courtesy of Aedes Studio

The surrounding neighborhood consists mostly of apartment blocks that date back from the 70’s. The buildings are large with enough space in-between and plenty of greenery. Because the whole area is built in relatively short period of time and not very long ago, it lacks the typical historic layers of the city center. Here the connection to nature is direct enough, the access to all city-conveniences – fast enough and easy, what makes the area nice to dwell. In spite of that it still lacks history, (memories of) the past and atmosphere.

The atmosphere in the city is a result of two very important factors. On one hand the connection to nature, which as already said, is granted. On the other hand – the feeling of the past, the traces of the people that have been here before us; the feeling of human community not only here and now, but also back in time. The feeling of the past alone is achieved mostly by the buildings.

Aedes Studio set the uneasy task to design a new “old building”; a contemporary building with past – a building that contains opposites. Aedes Studio wanted to enrich the neighborhood with an atmosphere from another time, to create something that makes them a flâneur (Baudelaire’s character – stroller in Paris) in the city. Aedes Studio approached this project as if they had to revitalize an old, abandoned part of the city (which is the case for harbor and past-industrial areas in many European cities). When such neighborhoods wake up for new life, they possess the charm of the past as well as all contemporary conveniences. Aedes Studio imagined as starting point an abandoned factory building, which after renovation becomes a luxury and desired place for habitation. (In Sofia such potential is held by the significant old “Sugar factory”.) But since Aedes Studio didn’t have a factory to begin with, we had to create it. This is how their “living factory” arose, characterized by many opposing ideas related to the terms “old” and “new”.

Source: archdaily.com