Built in the 1970s in the Soviet Communist microdistrict system, the apartment building on Pârva Alley in the Drumul Taberei neighbourhood followed the principles of free form urbanism, of objects isolated in a vast green area. When composer Pascal Bentoiu with his wife and daughter decided to move there just after the 1977 earthquake, the newly erected building lacked the gardens and the trees which today overrun the neighbourhood and tame the prefabricated structures’ appearance.

Until 2016, the Bentoius inhabited a place in a long, low-rise, 4-storey apartment building, the space seeming, when the many guests visited them in the four rooms accommodating the piano, books, and a variety of pieces, insufficient.

Andreea Chirca