The building of a former electricity transformer in Sinaia is the smallest holiday home in Romania

Out of the desire to have a space that creates closeness, a family from Bucharest bought and renovated a former electrical transformer in Sinaia. The outcome? The smallest vacation home in Romania, a unique place where every element has been carefully thought out and implemented, an architectural jewel of only 11 square meters.

Arsena and Dan live in Bucharest, but they often go on holidays together (along with their two children and two dogs), which is why they wanted a holiday home that would bring them closer, where maintenance costs would not affect the family budget.

The wish became reality when the building of a former electrical transformer station in Sinaia was put up for sale. “We fell irreparably in love with this building, which we knew since childhood, when we used to come to the mountains with our parents. On one of our visits through Sinaia we saw the for sale ad, and a week after that it was ours. Everything happened very quickly,” says Dan, an architect by profession.

There followed quite a long period in which they thought about how to approach the project, and in 2023 they started working on it. The renovation took eight months and was only finished at the end of the year, because at the time of purchase, the family did not know much about the building, and only then began to discover its story. “Once we did that, for us the building was no longer a building, but a jewel to be taken care of,” recalls the owner.

The story of an electrical transformer from Sinaia

The building converted by Arsena and Dan is part of a series of seven electricity transformer stations, different in design depending on the location. It was built in the period 1923-1926, according to the project of the architect Duiliu Marcu (1885-1966), on the occasion of the development of the electrification of the city, at the request of the “Electrica” ​​Company.

The T5 transformer, today the tiny T5, is positioned at the intersection of two streets in Sinaia, it has the shape of a tower, with a plan footprint of only 11 square meters and a cornice height of seven meters.

READ THE CONTINUATION ON LOVEDECO.RO