The site: Bucharest, as we who live here know it, is a city of stark contrasts bombarding your senses. This mix of old, new, organic, linear, loud and quiet, warm and cold makes it unique and captivating but also hard to understand making it easy to lose the bigger picture. Our museum, situated in the heart of Bucharest, tries to shed a light on the intricate sensations we feel in the city, centring people when dealing with the conflicting feelings and images of Bucharest. Our museum works together with the city, in an attempt to bring clarity and make visitors see their life in the outside world as a plenary immersive and interactive experience.
Our museum centres on the senses provoked by different areas of the site, each one of the three main areas being mirrored by an architectural prism. Each moment on the path has an interior space that mirrors it, the circulation through the volume symbolising a walk through the city.
The energetic path (yellow prism) represents animation, people, movement and noise, the monumental path (red prism) is overlooked by the grand historical buildings which dominate their surroundings, while the intimate path (blue prism) is inviting people to take a break from the busy streets and relax.
The volume represents the interconnections of those paths and reduces them to sensations involving the major senses of every area of the site. The volume opens perspectives to major exponents of the city Victoriei Avenue, The National Museum of Art and the Romanian Athenaeum. The prisms intersect each other, letting the different senses and characteristics of the prisms progressively melt into each other. The sharp angle of the volumes marks a progressive departure from the reality of the outside to more abstract and concentrated experiences. In the middle of the volume at the confluence of all the prisms there is a hidden space only connected with the sky, a pure space for people to reflect on their senses and the way they will use them once they reconnect with the city.
The colourful glass keeps people in a filtered dialogue with the outside while at the same time stimulating their senses in a controlled pleasant way, different from the chaotic and unpredictable Bucharest. As we move deeper into the prisms the spaces gradually become more introverted and the sensations more abstract.
The coloured light of the interior changes throughout the day together with the light on the site giving the space different shades of their symbolic colour. Inside the intersections, the light from the different prisms and the various colours of the paths are combined so that multiple perspectives are opened.
People are free to change directions at will, encountering other individuals from alternative entrances. The volume encourages people that enter to always go experience different areas of the site and centres them for better understanding the experience and implies the use of other senses than visual.
Experiencing every sequence is unique given the orientation, view, shape and colour. The spaces are flexible allowing different artists to give their take on the city and the space.