Atelier Zündel Cristea

Officially established in January of 2001, AZC now employs around thirty people, organised into four categories of work: concept design, project detail, construction management, and administration. Our teams consist of young architects from all over the world, and our own respective Swiss-American and Romanian origins have brought us to an understanding of crossing cultures and transgressing boundaries, which enrich our architecture. Consequently, the efficiency and creativity of our office are bolstered by a constant effort to observe what is happening outside the country in which we practice our architecture, in doing so striving to work internationally and embracing the differences that occur across the world. Each of our projects are produced through a strategy of qualitatively occupying its site, responding to each of its unique parameters without preconceptions of geographic location, program requirements, or scale. We wish to create buildings of architectural coherence that successfully inhabit their particular contexts, especially regarding urban projects, whilst maintaining the importance of combining the economical use of resources and an ecological attentiveness. We conceive architecture as a continual and collective effort, with the aim of transforming our cities and buildings to better serve the needs of our society. This is essentially what our firm achieves. It is the strength of our profession to impact upon, in real terms, the identity of a place and imbuing it with the qualities we envisage… Our supervision of the construction site places our office on the front line; this direct contact with the ongoing production of a building renders us ever more conscious of the importance of all our decisions, and continually enhances the quality of our projects. We now look towards the future, with the ideology combining realism, pragmatism, and freedom. Not depriving ourselves of the pleasure of innovation, we remain sensitive, attentive, and responsive to everyday realities. We aspire to contribute to the renewal and improvement of architectural practices through our proposals and designs.