Private Museum of Contemporary Art MARe is dedicated to Romanian art over the past half century. His collection was assembled by the Lebanese entrepreneur Roger Akuri, one of the founders of the largest pharmaceutical company in Romania, A&D Pharma. At the same time, he is a partner and co-founder of the Beirut architecture bureau YTAA (Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates), which took over the building for his museum.
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zooming 1/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 2/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Toufic Dagher
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zooming 3/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 4/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 5/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 6/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 7/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 8/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 9/9 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
The basis was a 1930s urban villa, unremarkable except for the fact that the most influential Romanian communist, Foreign Minister Anna Pauker lived there in the late 1940s. The architects saw in the reconstruction an opportunity to “reproduce” the dwelling in the form of a museum, turning the building into a call to culture addressed to Bucharest, as well as to confrontation with the past, with history, as opposed to the principle of “blank slate” of globalization. The authors abandoned the construction of a new one from scratch and the conservation of the old: as a result, a "ghostly figure" of the villa was created, indicating continuity and intended to raise questions.
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zooming 1/3 Villa before renovation © YTAA - Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates
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zooming 2/3 Villa before reconstruction © YTAA - Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates
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zooming 3/3 Villa before renovation © YTAA - Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates
The first floor facing the city with a lobby and a cafe is made transparent. Below, in the basement, and on the fourth, upper, floor, there are rooms for temporary exhibitions; on the second and third tiers, the permanent collection is shown. The dark brick facades are emphatically sculptural, recalling the previous architectural forms in an abstraction format.
In the interior, the main role is played by a black atrium with two staircases, where the circulation pattern makes you stop, think - or unexpectedly meet other visitors. In the same "anti-system" there are two rooms (black box) for the works of international artists. The museum also has an auditorium, reading area, outdoor theater and garden, and a rooftop terrace.
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zooming 1/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 2/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 3/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 4/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Cosmin Dragomir
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zooming 5/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Toufic Dagher
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zooming 6/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Toufic Dagher
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zooming 7/7 MARe Museum of Contemporary Art Photo © Toufic Dagher
