Rather than laying down rules, Péter Kis and Csaba Valkai’s realized competition design is intended to accommodate changes by its future users.

The working-class area of Józsefváros, Budapest’s 8th district, is currently undergoing a veritable metamorphosis. The biggest and most obvious project is the „Corvin Promenade“, a 22-hectare area that the developers are touting as a second city centre for the Hungarian capital (see also A10 #6). To make room for the many new shops, luxury apartment complexes and office buildings, hundreds of houses, many in a very poor state of repair, were demolished. In 2005, making good on a promise that new housing would be built to accommodate the district’s dispossessed former inhabitants, the Budapest city council and the local district council jointly organized an open competition for a block of social housing on Práter Utca. This street is just one street away from Pál Utca, made famous by the 1969 film adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s 1906 novel, The Paul Street Boys. Close to the competition site on Práter Utca stands a bronze artwork of the five marble-shooting street urchins of the novel. Little has changed in the one hundred years since the book’s first appearance: the area is still inhabited mainly by lower income earners, including many people from Roma origins.

The competition for the social housing block was won by Péter Kis’s practice. Péter Basa came second, and third prize was shared by the firms of Erick van Egeraat and Tamás Getto. This is Kis’s first social housing project; until now his practice has been best known for its projects at the Budapest Zoo, in particular the Bonsai pavilion, a meticulously detailed glass building whose timber frame was inspired by the bamboo plant. Péter Kis, whose practice is also located within the walls of the zoo, is currently working on the construction and interior revitalization of an artificial rock from 1912.

Kis’s winning Práter Utca design consists of two separate volumes linked by five footbridges, a configuration that allows the normally enclosed courtyard garden to be seen from the street. The district is characterized by closed street frontages that give no hint of the courtyards and green gardens that lie behind. Kis has deliberately exposed one of these gardens to the street. At the same time, he set the block that runs parallel to the street a few metres back from the building line, thereby creating extra public space. Facing onto this expanded sidewalk he placed a number of business premises and a small shop. The setback also allowed him to introduce projecting balconies on this side of the block. Where necessary he added a concrete awning to protect the floor above from flash-over in the case of fire. In his choice of materials for the facade Kis drew inspiration from the dark brick party walls that are another feature of this district. But so as not to imitate them too literally, he opted for a charcoal glazed tile which, while shaped like a brick, is laid in a stack bond. Kis sees his street facade more as an abstract stone curtain than a massive structural wall.

The choice of white synthetic frames for the apartments was motivated mainly by the very limited budget of 480 euros/m². Kis regarded the tight budget as a challenge, especially in light of the fact that he has been working for three years on the design of a very luxurious house for an exceptionally wealthy client.
The subtle interplay between the solid concrete balcony floors and awnings and the delicately detailed steel balcony railings is intriguing, adding a touch of vulnerability to what is at first glance a very robust building. On the day when the photos were taken, the complex had only shortly been inhabited. But the architect is not worried by the fact that the occupants of the relatively small apartments (from 30 to around 60 m²) will probably appropriate the balconies and close them off with rattan matting or, worse still, corrugated plastic sheeting. He is convinced that the building is strong enough – structurally and formally – to survive such interventions. Kis compares the complex to the Colosseum in Rome which has suffered all manner of encroachments over the years, only to emerge all the stronger. Which is why Kis has no intention of issuing any rules for his building. Instead, his architecture is designed to create possibilities and scope for the users. Only time will tell whether the occupants will value and appropriate this apartment block in such a way that it is able to grow old gracefully.

A10, Do., 2008.07.31

In a hilly suburb of Budapest, Zsuffa and Kalmár have designed a town hall in the form of an „artificial rock“

On the west side of the Hungarian capital lies the originally Swabian town of Budaörs. Since the political changes, this Budapest suburb has been best known for the American-style succession of big foreign chains strung out along the motorway to Vienna. The old, small-scale town centre, with a mere 25,000 inhabitants, is less well known. Two years ago the SDS liberal party held a national competition for an extension to the existing town hall. Out of the 40 submitted plans, the rather classical design from the young practice of Zsolt Zsuffa and Lásló Kalmár was awarded first prize.

The former town hall was housed in a no-nonsense office block and set sideon to the ribbon development of Budaörs. The competition guidelines required inclusion of the existing office in the new design. The architects found hardly any references in the immediate surroundings with which to link their design and instead drew their inspiration from the characteristic rocky hills around the town. The design can be interpreted as an artificial rock that has come rolling down one of those hills. On the outside the „rock“ is solid, on the inside hollow, with the council chamber and lobby in the core.

In their competition design, the architects proposed cladding the facade with stone from the local quarry. That idea fell through when the stone proved not to meet the required quality standards. However, locally-quarried gravel has been used as ballast on the flat roof, so that from the hilltop the building does have a solid, rock-like presence. Travertine – imported from Turkey in view of the highly competitive price – has now been used for the cladding and the floors. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, the contractor and the client opted for open joints. The architects would have preferred closed joints which would have given the building a more solid appearance.

The town hall can be approached either from the street side below, or from the parking lot higher up. On the street side, a four-storey portico demarcates a large public forecourt. With the spectacular dimensions of the colonnade the architects sought to give the building a more formal and more public presence than the previous, neutral office block.

From the forecourt, citizens enter the building centrally, into a double-height lobby. The lobby can also be accessed from the parking lot, through the second entrance. In that case, the visitor descends beside a narrow watercourse flowing across a ridged concrete surface which makes for a pleasantly soothing sound. The architects also made use of sloping site here to make ten tiered wooden benches, thereby satisfying the municipality’s schedule of requirements, which included a number of public spaces for cultural events. The visitor continues on below the envelope of the building and arrives in an enclosed courtyard. Recently it was decided to hold marriage ceremonies here in good weather.

Above the lobby is the heart of the building: the council chamber. The chamber is open to the street side and has a high strip of fenestration reaching to the top floor of the building where the municipal executive has its offices. Halfway up the existing building, one of the offices has been taken out, opening up the central corridor and allowing plenty of light to enter the building at that spot. The marriage room is situated on the first floor of the new section. The architects have sought to give it an ambience somewhere between a chapel and a sitting room. The same applies to the table from behind which the registrar conducts the marriage ceremony – according to Kalmár it is a cross between a kitchen table and an altar. In the end, Zsuffa and Kalmár succeeded in providing Budaörs with a fullfledged, accessible and timeless town hall with a very limited building budget (800 euros/m², incl. VAT). The young architects claim they do not like „fashionable“ architecture, but try to design buildings with a timeless presence. They are currently working on a competition for a site across the road from the town hall. Should they win, the „rathaus“ will undoubtedly find more appropriate references in its immediate surroundings!

A10, Fr., 2006.03.10