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Residential Building in Szemlohegy st

The spectacular renewal of buildings erected in the past few decades is a new trend in contemporary architecture. Obviously this does not mean that the architectural products of the Kadar-era suddenly were raised among the well know objects of Hungarian art history. These objects badly needed and need renovation and reconstruction, since due to poor manufacturing procedures, due to lack of good quality building materials these houses rapidly lost their novelty, became ugly and obsolete.

Even if the design cast on paper was original and interesting, when it was - the original ideas were covered by boring
That is why sometimes the value and the beauty of certain houses built in the 30s and in the 40s are only discoved after they are properly renovated. This was very much the case with the block of flats in Szemlőhegyi street. The object was designed by ÁÉTI (a sate owned design "istitue") between 1968 and 1972. The three story real estate was by no means considered to be one of the remarkable objects of the Budapest's most prominent district (Rózsadomb)- it was just one of the usual block buildings of the 70s lacking any special characterisitics.

Although the building's mass in itself was not bad, quite the contrary, it was really modern in fact. Its shape was defined by three blocks tightly pushed together, which were connected by a spacious hall and stairway inside. The floors in the three blocks are shifted by one third level compared to each other, therefore there were practically 9 different floors in the house, each floor following the previous on with only slight elevation. The shifted blocks combined with wide terraces created a pleasently tagolt mass.

The task given to the architects was to renovate the building so that the building's quality would be improved while reserving its original values that were more or less hidden in it previous form. The only fundamental change implemented was that three additional flats were added to the previous nine ones, however that did not alter the building's mass significantly, - since one of the three flats was built in the place of the former garage area and the lost parking places were replaced by a newly build underground parking facilty which utilised possibilities of the sloping hillside lot. And there were to penthouse like appartments created on the top of the building, these luxury appartments feature full panoramic view, due to the spacious terraces surrounding these appartments the addition of these two extra flats result in only subtle changes in the building's general appearance.

The outside of the building became more homogenous, bricks and wood panels that used to cover the building were removed of course this was primarily a cost saving opportunity for the commisioner. The combination of offwhite, dark red and grey was used inside and outside, this principle was stricktly followed through to the finest detailes.

When we enter the building we are pleasently suprised by entrence hall and the staircase, which looks like a serpentine, wide and rounded it is somewhat in contrast to the strickt anguler forms used oused outside.

Thanks to the thorough and meticulous design, the necessary compromises were found, and an elegantly understated house was created from the previous boring block of flats

Architects: Arpad Ferdinand, Csaba Ferdinand,

Ferdinand and Ferdinand Architects
Built in 2006
Published in the OCTOGON 2006 Text: Bori Bacsó

Photos: Istvan Oravecz

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