City Acropolis - Museum of Communism

Authors’ Comment

The construction of the Palace of the Parliament with the adjacent urban changes imposed a new urban configuration. During this process, not only monuments, buildings and streets were demolished, but there were also significant changes of the city's landscape: the headland of the Uranus hill, with the Armoury entrance and the hill of the Mihai Voda Monastery. Thus, Ceausescu managed, unlike most dictators, to fight not only the history, but also the urban geography.
Restoring the topography (by considering the volumes of the Palace of Parliament and the Salvation Cathedral) is possible and absolutely necessary in order to define the silhouette of Bucharest, hence valorizing the Palace's gardens and the urban context through a dialogue of spaces.
Bucharest needs a museum of communism. The building can rise in the space created by the restoration of the Mihai-Voda hill landscape, on a reinforced concrete structure covered by a 1.5 m layer of soil for vegetation. This will form an ample interior space which can be used as a museum. The volumetry of the former Archives of the State will be rebuilt in a sublimed way (not identical) and will include the functions which need natural light.

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