Macalik Arnold, Lázár Csaba and Szilágyi-Bartha József are working together for more than ten years in different formations. The project presented in this edition was realized at Mossfern Arhitectura, an architectural office which headquarter is in Cluj-Napoca, and whose activity is outlined around the preoccupation for projects of public interest - rehabilitation of the historical patrimony, public space design, public buildings and socio-cultural endowments.

The house is the home of a tight hermit community in the high hills. The core of the building is the chapel, like the yolk inside an egg. This is the essence of the house. The monastic life pulsates and circulates in the spaces around it. Thus the house is not only a space for dwelling, but in some way transcends itself. The Pauline Order chose to return to Transylvania, in the former mining settlement in the Hargita mountains, in an alpine setting. The hermitage, with its modest wooden church and adjacent nondescript parish, had to negotiate a steep site with a significant elevation difference. The strong columnal core (chapel-library-kitchen-heating center) and the monastic cells around it are linked in a “house within a house” formula. The spatial organisation and the layout is clear like a simple mathematical equation. The cold alpine climate explains the internal cloister circulation. Because of its quasi infinite length the spiralic tower represents the existence of the hermit's that transcends space and time. Roughly whitewashed brick walls separate the cells in the interior of the raw exposed concrete building, with the amprent of the plank used for the formwork. The inner core, a concrete shell with a fluted boundary, gives rise to a subtle articulation of tones of space between the outer and inner rows. The dramatic haptic reality of the space row is matched by its pulsating quality and a distinctly human scale. The curved opeion of this scale-breaking chapel looking up to the sky is a huge inverted shingle paraboloid evoking a multifaceted mystical convergence of divine and human. At the top of the tower, well separated from the cells, is the reception area for the pilgrims, with a huge window overlooking the landscape. This communal space of connection, quoting the former upstairs oratories, serves to separate guests from the monastic liturgies. The Coloured concrete envelope, poured layer by layer, bordering the building is an abstract projection of the local subsoil lithology. This sky-ground reflection is also intended to evoke the axis of hermit existence. The building is accessed on a bridge, a clear connection and passage to another sphere. The building works with contrasts: warm in its coldness, imposing in its nest-like human scale, carefully manufactured in its industrial appearance, ancient and timeless in its contemporarity. Its unified, distinctive vibration and its concomitant acoustics weave together the hermit community.