A few months ago I worked on my first residential project that I took from zero to final proposal: a 68 sqm apartment in Floreasca, Bucharest. Client: a couple around 35 years old, without very precise stylistic demands. Brief: open-plan living, dining, and kitchen, "modern, airy, without too many things."
It sounded simple, and it could have been, if we had skipped a few steps. I chose not to skip them.
Why I spent 3 sessions without proposing any furniture
The temptation in any project is to get to the proposal quickly: visual options, renderings, furniture. The client wants to see something concrete, the pressure to produce is real.
However, the first three iterations of this project produced no proposed furniture pieces. They produced one single thing: the basic module of the space. I looked for a mathematical rhythm that I would then apply consistently to all elements, from the kitchen island to the living room units, from the distances between functional zones to the height dimensions.
It's a logic I understood slowly at UAUIM, where an unsuitable structural grid can bring down your semester project in a few weeks. One wrong decision at the base costs ten times more time than if you get it right from the start. I transferred this to the design process at the office as well.
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When the module holds and when it fails
The first grid variant was 55 cm. On paper it seemed correct; in application it produced a 110 cm kitchen island, too narrow for functionality, and 165 cm living room units that visually clashed with the size of the existing windows.
I adjusted to 60 cm. The island reached 120 cm and worked ergonomically, the 180 cm units settled into the rhythm of the light openings. It's not an adjustment you make just "by eye." You make it when you understand that the module is not a fixed rule, but a tool that must be calibrated to the specific context of the space.
This is the difference between a design process based on methodology and one based on intuition. Both can produce good results. One produces explainable and reproducible results.
How mathematical logic works in practice
The living-dining area is 32 sqm, with the kitchen on one long wall. The challenge: three functional zones, living, dining, and cooking, in the same open volume, without visual fragmentation.
Instead of choosing arbitrary dimensions, I let the invisible grid dictate everything: the kitchen island at 120 cm (2 modules), the living room units on the opposite wall at 180 cm (3 modules), the distance between dining and living at 120 cm. Each element respects the same base multiple, creating a harmony that you feel, even if you can't measure it with your eyes.
The grid never appeared in the visual proposal presented to the client. The client, when seeing the final proposal, said the space "feels airy and logical." They didn't mention the module and didn't know it existed. That was the point.
The connection between the design process and what the user feels
There is a strange paradox in any good design: the better it is thought out, the harder it is to explain. A space that works perfectly tends to seem inevitable, as if it could not have looked any other way.
What is not seen are the iterations where I adjusted everything by a few centimeters, checking each time if the structural logic still held. There are evenings comparing proportion variants that looked almost identical visually, but functioned differently. It's the invisible work that any user takes for granted, which, from the designer's perspective, is exactly the desired result.
The feeling of "a space that makes sense" is not accidental. It is the direct consequence of a design process that prioritized the logic of the space before its aesthetics.
Why this matters in commercial or office spaces too
The design methodology based on a coherent module is not specific to residential. I see it applied also in the commercial and office projects at SelfDezign, with higher stakes and smaller tolerances.
In an open-plan office or a HoReCa space, the basic module determines circulation, zoning, and long-term configuration flexibility. A wrong grid means dead zones, blocked flow, and additional costs with any reconfiguration. A correct one allows later adaptations without demolishing the initial premises.
Minimalist design for commercial spaces does not mean few decorations. It means that every design decision has a clear functional justification, and their sum produces a space that works for its users, not against them.
What "less is more" actually means
"Less is more" is perhaps the most quoted and most incompletely understood principle in architecture. Everyone knows it. Few understand what it entails in practice.
"Less" on the surface, meaning space that seems simple and airy, is only possible after you have solved "more" in the background: more iterations, more time invested in decision-making, more patience with details that do not appear in the rendering.
The space in Floreasca seems to have drawn itself. It didn't. I worked for several weeks to make it seem that way, and I would do it again for the same result. Good design is not even noticed, because it is too well thought out to draw attention to itself.
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