Crafting Spaces That Elevate Everyday Life: An Interview with Alex Adam
There are architects who build buildings, and there are architects who build conversations about the city, identity, and the way we live. Alex Adam belongs to the second category. Founder of AAstudio, a practice born in 2005 and grown organically during a time when Romanian architecture was still searching for its voice, Alex Adam has managed to define a language of his own: clean, intelligent, detail-driven, yet never sterile. His projects – from award-winning interior designs to constant appearances at the Bucharest Architecture Annual and Romanian Design Week – speak of a mature sensitivity, of a way of seeing space as an extension of life rather than a formal exercise.
In a world where architecture moves between sustainability, digitalization, and an increasingly urgent need for authenticity, Alex Adam remains a lucid observer and an engaged creator. He is interested in the real city, not the idealized one; in real people, not the characters from renderings; in spaces that breathe, not those that merely impress.
This interview is not a list of technical questions. It is a conversation about identity, risk, memory, responsibility, and the kind of beauty that appears when architecture and interior design stops being an object and becomes a way of inhabiting the world.
Before us stands not only the Alex Adam, but the man who has learned to turn every project into a story, and every story into a space worth living in.
RM: Alex, thank you for accepting our invitation and for taking the time to have this conversation. We know how intense an Interior Designer life can be, between construction sites, clients, your team, and the ideas that never leave you alone, so your presence here truly matters. We’re glad to have you with us and to step a little into the backstage of how you see architecture, the city, and the world we build in.
RM: You founded AAstudio in 2005, at a time when Romanian architecture was still searching for its voice after the transition years. Looking back, when did you first feel that your practice was beginning to develop its own identity into something recognizable, something that belonged to you?
AA: I believe the identity of a studio does not emerge in a single moment, as an event you can mark on a calendar. It is built slowly, through hundreds of seemingly small decisions, through projects, mistakes, the commissions you choose to accept, and the compromises you choose not to make.
In the early years after 2005, like many architects, I was focused on proving that we could do good work. At some point, however, I realized that we were no longer trying to prove anything. We had begun asking our own questions and searching for our own answers. That is when AAstudio’s identity was truly born.
The moment I felt the studio had developed a recognizable voice was when people began identifying a project as ours before reading the signature. Not because we repeat a particular style, but because there is a consistent attention to proportion, light, materiality, and detail. For me, that coherence is the true definition of identity.
RM: Your interior projects, such as the Gafencu apartment, highly appreciated in the contemporary design scene, have a particular sensitivity, a balance between comfort and expression. What interests you most when you enter an empty space and have to turn it into a story?
AA: An empty space is always a promise. I am not interested in filling it with objects or spectacular gestures; I am interested in discovering the story that can exist within it.
The first thing I look for is not form, but the person. Who will live there? How do they begin their mornings? What calms them? What inspires them? What are their daily rituals? The answers to these questions are far more important than any furniture catalogue.
In residential projects, I try to create a dialogue between the identity of the place and the identity of the person who inhabits it. A successful interior is not the one that impresses at first glance, but the one that continues to function and inspire years later.
Design is not about objects. It is about the life that happens between them.
RM: AAstudio often speaks about innovation and the courage to take risks in design. What does “risk” mean to you in architecture? Is it an aesthetic risk, a technical one, an emotional one, or maybe all of them at once?
AA: In architecture, risk means having the courage not to choose the obvious solution.
There are aesthetic risks, of course. There are technical risks and economic risks. But I believe the most difficult one is intellectual and emotional risk: standing behind an idea you truly believe in, even when it is not immediately understood.
Innovation never emerges from comfort. It appears when you accept uncertainty and learn to work with it. Many of the projects that had the greatest impact on my career were also the ones that generated the most questions in the beginning.
For me, risk is not about being eccentric. It is about taking responsibility. It is about trusting the process enough to move forward even when you cannot yet see the outcome.
RM: You’ve won two awards at the Bucharest Architecture Annual and a special mention, and your projects have been present in the competition for more than a decade. How has this long relationship with the Annual shaped you? What does validation from your peers mean to you? And how do you relate to competitions in general – are they a real barometer of value, or more of a visibility exercise?
AA: Awards are important because they offer an external perspective on your work. When fellow professionals recognize a project, you feel that the professional dialogue is functioning and that your ideas have reached the audience they were intended for.
My relationship with the Bucharest Architecture Annual has been built over time. More than the awards themselves, what mattered was continuity. Being present consistently for more than a decade allowed me to observe the evolution of my own thinking while also witnessing the evolution of Romanian architecture.
I do not believe a competition can fully measure the value of a project. Architecture and Interior Design are ultimately tested by time and by the way people inhabit and use spaces. Competitions, however, have an important role: they create visibility, encourage debate, and elevate professional standards. When organized properly, they become instruments of culture rather than merely platforms for recognition.
I also value the recognition that comes through international editorial selection. Over the years, my projects have been featured in several prestigious design publications, including “Light in Architecture”, “Living in Style”, and “Posh and Proud – Interior Design Deluxe” (Braun Publishing, Berlin), as well as “Interior Design Review” (Andrew Martin / teNeues). Being included in these volumes confirmed that our work resonates beyond the local context and contributes to the international design conversation.
RM: In one of your earlier interviews, you spoke about the “ugliness that suppresses beauty” in our cities. How do you see Bucharest today? Does it still have a chance to become a coherent city, or do we need to learn how to love the chaos?
AA: I still speak about the beauty that is often suffocated by ugliness because the issue has not disappeared. Our cities continue to suffer from the absence of a coherent vision and from decisions made exclusively with short-term objectives in mind.
At the same time, I am more optimistic today than I was a few years ago. Bucharest possesses an extraordinary energy. It has contradictions and imperfections, but it also has a vitality that many perfectly organized cities have lost.
I do not believe we need to learn to love chaos. I believe we need to learn how to manage complexity. The city will never be perfect, but it can become more intelligent, more human, and more generous. The opportunity exists. The real question is whether we have the patience and maturity to build with a long-term perspective.
RM: When you look at Romanian architecture today, what do you see first: the potential or the limitations? And what do you think it reveals about the way we live as a society?
AA: I see the potential first.
It is easy to talk about limitations: bureaucracy, imperfect legislation, insufficient urban education, economic pressure. All of these are real. But I also see an extraordinarily talented generation of architects working in Romania today.
Architecture is always a mirror of society. If we look carefully at the buildings we create, we can understand what we aspire to, what we lack, and what values we hold. Romania is still going through a process of defining its identity, and this is clearly reflected in architecture.
We stand between tradition and modernity, between the local and the global, between memory and development. It is precisely from this tension that the most interesting projects emerge.
RM: Is there a project in AAstudio’s portfolio that changed you as a person, not just as an architect? A project that asked questions you didn’t yet have answers to when you began?
AA: Yes, there are several, but one occupies a special place in my memory.
Not because it was the largest or the most awarded project, but because it forced me to reconsider my own certainties. It was a project where the context, the client, and the constraints seemed incompatible. At first, I was searching for architectural solutions. Along the way, I discovered that the questions were fundamentally human.
That experience taught me that architecture is not about absolute control. It is about negotiation, listening, and adaptation. Sometimes the most important projects are not the ones that transform a place, but the ones that transform you.
RM: Globally, architecture is moving fast: sustainability, modularity, digitalization, local identity. Which of these directions challenges you the most, and how does it show up in your recent work?
AA: Perhaps the greatest challenge is finding the balance between technology and identity.
Digitalization offers extraordinary tools. We can simulate, analyze, and control processes that seemed impossible twenty years ago. But technology should never become the purpose of the project itself.
In recent years I have become increasingly interested in sustainability, but in a deeper sense than energy performance alone. For me, a sustainable project is one that ages beautifully, adapts over time, and remains relevant for future generations.
I believe the future belongs to projects that manage to be contemporary without losing their local roots. This perspective has also been shaped by the opportunity to work on projects in diverse international contexts, including the Monte Carlo (Principality of Monaco), French Riviera, Paris (France), Kitzbühel (Austria), Toscana (Italy), Miami (USA), Abu Dhabi, Dubai (U.A.E.) and in Namibia. Each of these places challenged me to understand a different relationship between climate, culture, lifestyle, and space, and they reinforced my belief that good architecture must always respond to the spirit of the place.
RM: If you had to choose one architect – Romanian or international – with whom you feel you have a silent conversation every time you start a project, who would that be? And what part of their philosophy follows you?
AA: If I had to choose one name, it would probably be Tadao Ando. His work has always reminded me that architecture does not need excess to create emotion. The dialogue between light, concrete, silence, and nature is extraordinarily powerful. What I admire most is his ability to create spaces that invite reflection rather than simply impress. Whenever I begin a project, I do not ask myself how the space will look. I ask how it will feel. How the light will fall. How materials will age. How silence itself will be perceived. Those are questions that continue to guide my work.
Not because I try to reproduce her architecture, but because I shared her fascination with atmosphere and the sensory experience of space. She spoke about buildings almost as living organisms, and that perspective has profoundly influenced me.
Whenever I begin a project, I do not ask myself how the space will look. I ask how it will feel. How the light will fall. How materials will age. How silence itself will be perceived.
These are the questions that have accompanied me throughout my entire career.
RM: Finally, if you could leave a message for the young architects coming up behind you, not about software or technique, but about life and the profession, what would you tell them about the road ahead?
AA: I would tell them to protect their curiosity and not build their identity exclusively around their profession.
Interior Design and Architecture is more than a profession; it’s a passion that shapes spaces and influences lives. Yet, when every ounce of energy is invested in projects alone, creativity can slowly fade. To keep creating exceptional work, you need to nurture the source behind it: yourself.
Travel. Read. Observe people. Walk through cities without a specific destination. Understand culture, history, music, and literature. All of these eventually become building materials for an interior designer’s way of thinking.
And perhaps most importantly, never forget that being successful doesn’t mean you have to be visible. The most valuable projects are not always the most photographed ones. Sometimes they are the projects that quietly improve people’s lives every day, without drawing attention to themselves.
