Two architects. You get both. The people you meet are the people who draw.
Most studios introduce you to a partner and deliver you to a junior. We cannot do that even if we wanted to: ZEIA is Andra and Elena, a Romanian-Swiss architecture studio of exactly two people. Whoever you spoke to on the first call is the person sketching your kitchen at midnight.
We have designed homes and kindergartens for years, between Romania, Switzerland and Germany. We live between countries ourselves — which is why we work in English, and why the clients we understand best are the ones who moved somewhere on purpose and now want their flat to agree with that decision.
Small is not a compromise; it is the product. Every decision in your project is made by someone who knows your name, your rug, and the argument you had about the kitchen island. Nothing is decided over your head, because there is no head to go over.
Who we are
Andra Ionel and Elena Zara, co-founders. Architects by training, interior obsessives by temperament. One of us is usually in Romania, one closer to you — between the two of us, someone is always awake, and someone is always near a site.
We speak English, German, Romanian and Italian. We answer emails ourselves, we draw everything ourselves, and we come to the site ourselves. When a project needs a German architect's formal sign-off, we bring in a local licensed partner we trust — and we say so up front, not in the small print.
What we ask of you is what we ask of ourselves: honesty early. Tell us what you love, what you fear spending, and what you secretly hate about the flat. We can work with anything except politeness.
What working with two people means in practice
Thirty minutes in English, with the people who will actually draw your home. If we are not the right studio for it, we will say so, and point you to someone who is.