ADNBA, an architecture studio with offices in Bucharest and Berlin, has nearly 25 years of practice behind it and an extensive portfolio of projects. Today, it is a solid group of professionals with diverse backgrounds and skill sets.
The studio’s constant pursuit of balance between innovation and experience has led to broad recognition of the quality of its work, reflected in multiple selections and awards.
ADNBA has participated in more than 18 international architecture competitions—from collective housing and school projects to urban regeneration interventions in cities — held in Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Ravensburg.
Among these, the proposal for the New Eschborn Center competition (2025, in collaboration with JB Arhitectura) was awarded First Prize.
On the list of international distinctions, ADNBA was selected three times consecutively among the top 40 finalist projects of the EU Mies van der Rohe Award—with the projects Dogarilor 26–30 (2015), Occidentului 40 (2019), and Mumuleanu 14 (2022).
These are complemented by two BigSEE Architecture Award (Ljubljana, 2019 and 2021), First Prize at the Milan Zlokovic Award (Serbia, 2015), a finalist position at the World Architecture Festival (2015), and multiple nominations for the Simon Architecture Prize (Barcelona, 2022) and the Share Architecture Awards (Athens, 2024).
The studio’s projects have been published in architecture magazines and books across Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, China, and the United Kingdom—including Detail, Deutsche Bauzeitung, A10, and World Architecture, as well as volumes published in Barcelona by Linea Editorial and Booq Publishing. The platform ArchDaily has featured multiple dedicated articles on its projects, alongside Dezeen, Metalocus, and Baunetz.
In 2015, the studio participated in the central exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture with the installation Hilariopolis, curated by Alejandro Aravena—one of the most significant international platforms in the field.
** Urban Space 1, Imobil de apartamente pe str. Dogarilor 26-30**
Proiectul caută să răspundă densificării rapide din centrul Bucureștiului, propunând o clădire care mediază între diferite mărimi și densități, într-un cartier central caracterizat de străzi mici, parcele lungi, înguste și un amestec de clădiri vechi și noi de toate tipurile și scările. Răspunsul nu este doar formal, ci și tipologic, oferind o varietate de 77 de apartamente de peste 50 de tipuri.
Urban Space 2, Imobil de apartamente pe str. Mumuleanu 14
O locuire deopotrivă colectivă și individuală: 7 case mari, născute din mai multe locuințe suprapuse, sunt amplasate succesiv de-a lungul unei grădini adânci, ascunse în spatele blocurilor care închid bulevardul. Individualizarea intrărilor, desfășurarea traversantă a apartamentelor, relațiile dintre interior și exterior și secvențialitatea spațiilor de viață compun, împreună, imaginea unui mod aparte de a locui.
Apartment building on Occidentului Street 40
Occidentului Street, with its heterogeneous urban fabric, is reinterpreted through a fragmented volume articulated by setbacks and variations in height. The insertion proposes 20 dual-aspect residential units, organized on staggered levels, generating rich spatial sequences and a sense of domestic verticality. The open façades reflect the building’s interior life while clearly expressing its structure and internal organization.
Hilariopolis / La Biennale di Venezia 2016
Hilariopolis is Bucharest seen as a border territory, somewhere at the edge between the East and the West, where an amalgam of buildings, streets, courtyards, lives, and traces of people is continuously redrawn through overlapping, layering, or intersections.
It is a story about what already exists and what we try to add—about fragments and relationships, about the material and the immaterial, about building and inhabiting.
"Architects are architects, buildings are buildings wherever they may be; they work with spaces, with construction, with places, with cities. And inhabiting is a universal theme. Where objective qualities exist, any residential building, from anywhere, will be able to establish a dialogue with a relevant jury."
"Local testimonies are often the most sincere — and we would also say the most interesting—for those who seek, assemble, compare, and choose."
"Bucharest and this part of Europe remain a somewhat exotic world for the West, like all “peripheral” worlds… the Bucharest we referred to may in fact appear more clearly to a gaze that is not involved in the everyday life of the place and immersed in it."