MARe Museum Of Art / YTAA - Youssef Tohme Architects And Associates

Architects: YTAA – Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates
Area: 1580 m²
Year: 2018
Photographs: Cosmin Dragomir, Toufic Dagher
Lead Architect: Youssef Tohme
Landscape: Marti-Baron + Miething
Project Architect: Toufic Dagher
Clients: MARe Foundation
City: Bucharest
Country: Romania

MARe Museum of Art by YTAA – Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates in Bucharest reimagines a 1930s villa, transforming it into a museum that bridges historical continuity with modern urban interaction. The villa, elevated on a glazed base, becomes both a public art piece and a cultural symbol, resisting the binary of old versus new by proposing a “third way”—a transformation that emphasizes Bucharest’s layered and polycentric urban fabric. The museum expands vertically and horizontally, blending spaces of everyday life with cultural functions. A central atrium with two staircases disrupts the traditional flow, fostering unexpected interactions and encounters. The design reflects Bucharest’s history of resilience under dictatorship, merging social space, individual experience, and art in the contemporary context.

MARe Museum of Art / YTAA - Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates

How can architecture be created in a city marked by destruction, where the population’s memory and individuality have been deeply eroded? In this context of discontinuity, the challenge is to awaken awareness and treat history as current and relevant. This bold, political act is precisely what the French-Lebanese architecture firm YTAA seeks to explore.

Architect Youssef Tohme transformed a 1930s villa, typical of Bucharest’s architectural fabric, taking on not just its architectural role but also its symbolic and urban significance. Elevated on a glazed base and open to the public, the recreated house serves both as a museum piece and a bold statement to the city, inviting confrontation and cultural dialogue.

This radical and daring approach avoids the binary opposition between the old and the new by creating a third option: transforming the historical villa into a ghostly figure that embodies both continuity and inquiry. By explicitly highlighting this architectural model, the design brings attention to the polycentric nature of the city, showcasing its unique qualities of juxtaposed and intermingling eras, as well as its irregularity and durability.

Beyond resisting the erasure of local identity and the effects of globalization, especially in young democracies, the preservation and reinterpretation of this familiar architectural form to house a museum introduces a crucial dimension: the space of everyday life, individuality, and subjectivity. Despite its relatively small size for an institution, MARe expands through a logic of multiplying and amplifying spaces both horizontally and vertically. Temporary collective exhibition spaces occupy the Basement and Attic, while the permanent collections are housed on the First and Second Floors. This straightforward layout is disrupted by a central atrium with two staircases, which instead of guiding and reassuring visitors, creates gaps, hidden views, and friction that disturb movement. Two black boxes at half-levels within this bright-dark contrast add to the disorientation and display works by international artists. This unsystematic circulation design fosters human encounters, moments of intimacy, and opportunities for unexpected interactions.

The architect explains that “under dictatorship, Bucharest’s residents were compelled to create and discover their own spaces for exchange and freedom to survive and maintain their individuality. This approach to space has become a defining feature of the city’s vision. MARe reflects on Romanian society and how its people see their future.” In this museum, social space, individual space, and artwork are intertwined, creating a unique environment. This integration provides a meaningful way to situate the artworks within the context of Bucharest’s vibrant present.