1. It was a serene and tranquil building. Number 5. Three floors, three separate units, and four residents altogether! The first floor’s unit with an area of 110 m², empty and lonely for a year and a half, was thinking of the woman who had built the building forty years ago and was no longer alive. The tranquility of the building and its environment was totally the opposite of our office.

2. We are an architect couple. We have been designing and supervising construction projects for ten years. A full-time and intense job. More than 12 hours a day. In an office so much like all other office spaces of the city, which are at their best, exhibitions of materials, decorations, new volumes, or overloaded with furniture and MDF walls. For a while, we were thinking of the idea that we are meant to spend these daily 12 hours in a social, logical, simple, and silent space, just like our own characters.

3. The potentials of the first-floor unit of the building attracted the attention of both of us at the very first visit. The concept of the work was in our minds over the past years so we immediately drew its architectural design and the subsequent physical changes in the same night. On the second visit, we hastily measured the unit. Then we were sure we wanted it!

4. The problem of the building number 5 was its abandonment for years, maybe even from the very first year of its creation. Erosion and exhaustion were clearly evident in all the components of the building and the first-floor unit. And that was, of course, the reason that no one showed any interest in it for a year and a half after the death of the owner. But this was in our favor. Because we were able to own it at a lower price. Alongside our current projects, it was absolutely a tough project to change the exhausted exterior of the building, despite all the limitations derived from the four residents of the other two units, budget control, and providing the appropriate mental space for twelve hours of daily work.

5. We had so simply and based on the maximum connection and linkage of the unit, tied the south to the main passage, the north to the skylight, the east to the main entrance, and the public staircase to the yard’s suspended stairs, and this made a perspective of what existed and still exists!

The dried fig tree in the front yard, which is no longer alive, was and still is a witness to all the happenings.