MARe Museum Muzeul de Artă Recentă

  • Bucharest, Romania

    Location:

    Bucharest, Romania
  • 711 sqm

    Area:

    711 sqm
  • Completed 2013-2018

    Status:

    Completed 2013-2018
  • Type

    Museum
  • Consulting Structural Engineer

    Ductil Tech
  • Curator

    Erwin Kessler
  • Built Area

    1,580 sqm
  • Project Manager

    Antoine Touma
  • Local Architect

    PZP Architectura
  • Consulting Mechanical Engineer

    Wissam Tawil & Associates / MEP engineers S.A.L
  • Consulting Electrical Engineer

    Wissam Tawil & Associates / MEP engineers S.A.L
  • Consulting Landscape Architect

    Ana Marti Baron
  • General Concrete Contractor

    Colina Development SRL
  • General Finishing Contractor

    Colina Development SRL
  • Client

    Private

MARe - The Museum of Recent Art - is intended as an incubator for vernacular visual culture, both a platform for rethinking recent Romanian art, and a panorama of the local art scene of the past decades.

This structure, located in the residential area of Bucharest, was built as a private villa in 1939 and is considered a historic building. The project consists of adding one floor to the existing structure, thus highlighting part of the city’s pre-Communist heritage, and opening the museum toward the surrounding city. The four-meter ceiling height on the ground floor is emphasized to create a public space that will also encourage contact with the city. The actual process consists of demolishing the original brick structure and then rebuilding it in black concrete.

  • Mass Plan
    Mass Plan

Decorations and details of the original building are cast in concrete and used in the new structure.

A basement, originally finished in brick, was left as it was to emphasize the underground archeology of the former villa. Service elements such as piping for water, heating and ventilation are left apparent but painted black on the ceilings. Two staircases form the structural and circulation core of the building. A central void with overhead glazing brings in natural light.

Publications

  • A&C Magazine - Feb 2020

    "How to produce architecture in a city described by its destructions, where the population has so long been diminished in its power of memory and its individuality?" In this situation of discontinuity, it is a question of awakening the gaze: Convene history as a topical news. It's a strong act, a political act that the French-Lebanese architecture firm YTAA proposes to question. Read More
  • D' Architectures - February 2019

    "Comment produire de l'architecture dans une ville où la population a si longtemps été brimée dans son pouvoir de mémoire et dans son individualité?" s'interroge Youssef Tohme. Dans cette situation de discontinuité, il s'agit pour lui de réveiller le regard: convoquer le passé et l'histoire comme une actualité, et envisager l'architecture comme une production aussi sosciale que symbolique. Read More