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Architects: 3h architecture
- Area: 23330 m²
- Year: 2015
- Photographs: Tamas Bujnovszky
Text description provided by the architects. There is a peculiar spot on the northeastern office corridor in Budapest: a crossroad cuts in the orthogonal urban tissue. Thus the building mass recesses compared to the other buildings on the corner. This can be interpreted as a backyard situation, which gets into central position by the curve of the crossroad. In this place, the focal point coming from the irregularity of the urban tissue had to be created by designing a freely shaped building.
The slabs that follow the rationality of the office typology open up in a fan-like shape in the direction of the open space. Two of them thus follow the orthogonality of the urban tissue. The third element is wedged in between the two and redefines their seemingly simple relationship.
The office blocks follow the curve of the street, the mass gradually steps down towards the lower residential units. Dynamism is an essential principle that becomes obvious on the move: the prisms designed in a strict geometric order sometimes cover each other, sometimes unfold themselves. The variation of the positive and negative spaces, the turning of the sloping blocks are part of the illusion that becomes obvious by circuiting the building. The canopies stretch between the office slabs, their rhombus shaped openings become more and more spacious towards the building’s inner side. The shapes of the lower and upper plane alter so that their intercept changes consistently, it shepherds the light towards the inner, darker parts. The geometrical trick makes for airiness and levitation, thus the sculptural surface does not seem to be heavy.
The idea of the progressive transition appears also on the facade. The glassed surfaces appear on the prisms like ribbons, although the proportion of the glassed and solid parts differs in each block. The northern block is glassed from floor to ceiling, the windows of the next block are at the usual parapet-height, while on the southern block there are significant solid zones.
The building’s garden has a rich flora, it evolves from prismatic mounds, and this solution has not only aesthetically, but environmental friendly effects as well, since the garden functions as a sound-proof wall or rather a dust-filter by the means of its terraced structure and its flora. The passengers’ and cyclists’ path leads along an area that is open and closed at the same time by the fan.
