Centre for Architectural Culture of Bucharest

Authors’ Comment

The Centre for Architectural Culture of Bucharest is proposed on 2 Splaiul Independenței and 7 Nicolae Tonitza Street, on the stretch of the Dâmbovița river between Piața Națiunile Unite and Piața Unirii, at the edge between the riverbank and the Historic Centre (protected zone no. 27). The Dâmbovița is an urban river of intimate scale, with a channel 40-55 m wide, so the project is designed to be experienced up close, from the opposite bank or from the promenade, rather than read from a distance as an iconic object.
The central concept is that of an urban magnet: a structure that attracts and retains, makes architecture visible as a discipline in public space, and serves both the professional community and the general public. The programme unfolds along the waterfront, generating a cultural promenade with multiple entrances. The ground floor is almost entirely public, temporary exhibitions, an architecture bookshop, a café, an open interior garden, while the upper levels house the specialised programme: the permanent exhibition, workshops and a project library.
The building's controlled height dialogues with the opposite bank and with the rhythm of the continuous front. The façade facing Splaiul Independenței is open and transparent, treated as a surface of dialogue with the water; at night, interior light turns it into an urban beacon. The façade facing Nicolae Tonitza Street is denser and more sculpturally articulated, with an entrance through a passage and display windows that show the activities inside at eye level. This dual identity answers the site's dual condition: a riverfront territory and a historic fabric with its own logic.
The centre works across three timescales. Daily, the ground floor serves passers-by and residents, free of charge. Weekly, conferences, book launches and debates attract a more specific audience. Annually, major exhibitions and architecture biennials can make the centre a pole of metropolitan attraction.
The riverbank is an extension of the cultural programme: locks raise the water level between the two squares and create a belvedere, the widened pavement becomes a promenade with planted shade, and floating pontoons give access to the water. The space can host meetings, small theatre and music performances, or simple pauses, making use of the natural scenography of the water.
A public pedestrian route links Nicolae Tonitza Street to the waterfront through the open interior courtyard, conceived as an urban passage. The centre thus becomes an urban joint, not just a destination, between the density of the Historic Centre and the openness of the embankment.
Through its programme, its relationship with the water and the quality of the public space it generates, the proposed centre aspires to be what Lynch called a node: a point of concentration and radiation of urban life, a place you leave with a clearer understanding of the city you live in.