international visual arts center
reshaping a former industrial building assembly
Bucharest, Romania | 2012
Located in an area of Bucharest characterized by rapid economic development, International Visual Arts Center aims to become one of the landmarks of a future cultural route, which also includes the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Theatre, the Romanian Peasant Museum and the "Dimitrie Gusti" Village Museum. The site is currently occupied by a former plant, and the aim of the project is to achieve its functional conversion. Generally, the conversion of industrial areas has been successful when approaching cultural programs, as well as public spaces, designed in such a way as to allow social interaction and cultural exchanges of any kind. This center of the visual arts was created as a manifesto against the physical and socio-cultural decay of post-industrial cities and against the practice of abandoning former industrial areas, although they could be the perfect setting for spontaneous or organized social and cultural events.
The existing buildings now house small artistic production activities, but becoming an attraction point calls for an intervention of reconnecting with the city flow. Dynamism and unpredictability are the key words behind the proposal idea. Based on existing structural openings, we proposed modulation of the buildings on three types of cubic modules with sides of 1.5, 3, or 6 meters. Each of these modules corresponds, program wise, a certain percentage of necessary functions: exhibition halls, galleries and workshops, conference rooms, libraries, shopping areas, restaurants, pavilions, urban furniture elements etc. The positioning of the modules was performed both with regard to various programmatic considerations, as well as with a natural illumination principle that involves setting the arrangement according to the cardinal points, and the openings are dimensioned according to specific light requirements.
