May 11, 2026
Bucharest Turns 10
Ten years ago, Manasc Isaac opened Latitudine 53: a new studio in Bucharest, Romania. Ten years and one rebrand later, Reimagine's Bucharest studio is still going strong. We held a toast on Monday, May 11, raising a glass from Edmonton to Bucharest (and Vancouver, and Calgary), to celebrate the occasion.
Bucharest's 2016 launch marked an important moment in our firm's story: an Edmonton-based architecture practice carrying its way of working into a new European context.
For much of Alberta’s architectural history, design influence often moved in the opposite direction, with major ideas and signature buildings imported from elsewhere. Our Bucharest studio reflected and carried forward lessons shaped through years of practice in Edmonton and the North: designing with climate, listening closely to community, respecting local culture, and seeing possibility in places others might overlook.
The story began when Vivian Manasc visited Bucharest and spoke to architecture students about winter design. For Ana-Dora Matei and Alecsandru Vasiliu, the idea of designing with climate, seasons, culture, and community in mind felt entirely new. They later came to work at our Edmonton studio, where they experienced a collaborative culture shaped by shared learning, open questions, and place-based design.
When it was time to return to Bucharest, they brought that experience with them. This new studio became a bridge between two cities with more in common than might first appear. Edmonton and Bucharest are both four-season cities shaped by growth, reinvention, and unfinished possibility. Both are places where existing buildings, local culture, and creative energy create opportunities to rethink what architecture can do. A decade later, that bridge matters more than ever. Cities everywhere are facing questions that cannot be answered by style alone: how to renew rather than replace, how to design for changing climates, how to support community life, and how to create places that feel grounded, resilient, and alive.
As Reimagine’s Bucharest studio enters its next decade, we see new opportunities to keep building from that shared ground. There are more existing buildings to rework, more climate lessons to exchange, more communities to listen to, and more ways for architecture to help places grow without losing what makes them distinct.
That is the promise of the next decade: not a single direction of influence, but a continuing exchange between places, people, climates, and cultures. From Edmonton to Bucharest, the work is still unfolding.