Historic pharmacy reborn as layered café interior in Cluj-Napoca

Laboratorium, a contemporary café and hospitality space in the heart of Cluj-Napoca, occupies the ground floor of Palatul Széki, a late 19th century corner building originally conceived as the Matia Corvin Pharmacy.

The adaptive reuse project carefully balances preservation and intervention, transforming a richly detailed heritage interior into a contemporary public venue without diminishing its architectural depth.

GALLERY  

Palatul Széki was designed in 1893 by Pecz Samu, the Hungarian architect known for landmark works including Budapest’s Central Market Hall and a series of eclectic, Gothic influenced library commissions. Commissioned for Miklós Széki, a pharmacist, academic and entrepreneurial patron, the building once integrated domestic and commercial life, with Széki occupying the apartment above his pharmacy and accessing it via a private spiral metal staircase.

The interior retains the extraordinary craftsmanship of the original pharmacy fitout, including solid wood furniture articulated with Gothic arches, fleurons and stained glass inserts. Produced in the same period by Cluj-based cabinetmaker B. Bak Lajos, these elements were carefully preserved. During the conversion, all original joinery was retained and restored, while decorative painting was recovered from the building’s original surface layers under the coordination of EktraArhitectura.

The design brief posed a central question around how to introduce a contemporary program into a space of significant material and historical density without subordinating either condition. The response was to treat restoration as the primary architectural act, establishing a calibrated framework within which new insertions could sit in quiet dialogue with the past.

Fain Design Studio’s interior architecture operates through contrast rather than imitation. In the main room, two coffee bars are expressed as sculptural work surfaces in curved brushed stainless steel, reflecting light from ogival arched windows. Contemporary metal inserts, modular seating and refined fixtures are deliberately restrained, allowing the carved timber cabinetry, medicinal labels, interior columns and stained glass to remain dominant visual anchors.

The former laboratory room has been reactivated as a secondary seating area, retaining its vaulted ceiling and tall skylights. A reconstituted paint layer reinstates the original chromatic register of the vault, while opaline red lighting introduces a contemporary scenographic layer across the historic surfaces.

The result is an interior that neither fossilises its heritage condition nor overwrites it. Instead, Laboratorium integrates historic fabric and contemporary use through precise material decisions and a disciplined approach to insertion, positioning the space as a living continuation of Cluj-Napoca’s layered urban history.

Images by in-still via ArchDaily

Laboratorium, a contemporary café and hospitality space in the heart of Cluj-Napoca, occupies the ground floor of Palatul ...