Hungarian Architecture

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist of four finalist projects in the running for the 2018 RIBA International Prize. A biennial award open to any qualified architect in the world, the International Prize seeks to name the world’s “most inspirational and significant” building. Criteria for consideration include the demonstration of “design excellence, architectural ambition, and [delivery of] meaningful social impact.”

Sou Fujimoto’s House of Hungarian Music is set to begin construction in an idyllic natural setting beside Városliget Lake in Budapest’s largest park. Having won a competition for the scheme’s design in 2014, the Japanese architect has designed a “modern and extravagant home for music” drawing inspiration from both the natural and musical worlds.

Hello Wood has revived its highly-successful POP-UP Park, bringing a touch of vibrancy to an underused square in downtown Budapest. Having built the structures in the summer of 2017, the park has returned one year later to provide “a democratic space for all social groups embedded within the everyday movement of the city.”

Hungarian architects Paradigma Ariadné push the concepts of progression and growth to a literal spatial extreme in their proposal for a new sport complex for the MTK Football Academy. Drawing inspiration from the diagram of traditional European peasant houses, the design stretches into a kind of visual infinity, stacking all the rooms in the building along a single horizontal axis.

UNStudio, in collaboration with Buro Happold Engineering, has won an international competition for the design of a new bridge spanning the River Danube in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Their scheme will serve as a blueprint for the "Galvani Bridge" connecting South Buda and Csepel, balancing graceful aesthetics with strong performance.

Imagine having input in the design process for your custom apartment built alongside the second largest river in Europe. T2.a Architects has unveiled their design for DANUBIO, a new residential development in Budapest, which aims to do just that.

Budapest-based architectural firm Hello Wood has continued its annual tradition of constructing wooden Christmas trees, this year expanding the program with a total of 5 trees throughout Europe. In London and Vienna, trees made of sleds recall a design concept first used by Hello Wood in 2013; meanwhile, two locations in Budapest and in the Hungarian city of Kecskemét are witnessing the return of the firm's "charity trees," installations made of firewood which are later dismantled and distributed to families in need for the winter season.

In his new series, “Corner Symmetry,” Hungarian photographer and printmaker Zsolt Hlinka captures some of his home city of Budapest’s most stunning buildings, manipulating them to make them appear as if they are perfectly symmetrical when viewed from the corner.

Foster + Partners have revealed designs for the sustainability-minded new headquarters of Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Group in southern Budapest. Known as MOL Campus, the plan will center on an environmentally-progressive structure located within in a park-like setting. When completed, it will become this city’s tallest building.

Since the first Hello Wood Project Village debuted in 2015, architecture, art and design students from all over the world have gathered together each summer in Hungary to imagine and build structures using innovative wood construction techniques. With each passing year, the village has grown more complex, with new students using the decisions of their predecessors to inform and evolve subsequent designs.