Bucharest Architecture Center (BAC)

Authors’ Comment

Bucharest Architecture Center begins with a reflection on architecture exposed to abandonment and on the scars such structures can leave within the city. Casa Radio is one of Bucharest’s most powerful examples: a monumental, unfinished building that has remained disconnected from urban life for decades, becoming a visible void in the very center of the capital.
The project proposes the conversion of this structure into a center dedicated to architecture and the city, with the main intention of bringing the building back to a human scale and reintegrating it into the everyday life of the community. The aim was not to create a museum that is visited occasionally and then forgotten again, but to transform the entire site into a living, accessible and constantly present piece of the city.
The main gesture is the opening of the building towards the community through a continuous public route, where architecture, landscape and museum become part of the same experience. The urban slope brings nature over the building and transforms its monumental and distant character into a walkable and accessible path. The roof, park, interior spaces and viewing areas become extensions of public space, allowing the building to shift from being a physical barrier to becoming a place of encounter.
The Museum of Architecture forms the public component of the center and is conceived as an active interface with the community. Its route is free and non-linear, based on experience, curiosity and exploration. Exhibitions, models, installations, educational spaces and workshops are designed to bring architecture closer to a wider audience and to transform it from a field often perceived as distant or specialized into a language that can be understood through direct spatial experience.
In contrast, the second building on the site accommodates the more private and professional component of the center: research spaces, offices, temporary and private exhibitions, conferences and events dedicated to professionals, together with short-term residency spaces for architects, researchers and invited guests.
The two components operate together: one open to the city, the other dedicated to research and professional exchange. In this way, Bucharest Architecture Center transforms an architecture of abandonment into an architecture of belonging, where the memory of the existing structure is not erased, but becomes the starting point for a new relationship between architecture, community and the city.