In Budapest, the results of the competition for the project of a museum complex were announced, where it is planned to move the collections of the Hungarian branch of the Ludwig Museum, the New National Gallery and several other collections. The complex will be located on the territory of the bicentennial city park Varoshliget; the city administration plans to build a grandiose construction and serious investments. Six large museums, a huge building area - it is not surprising that both professionals and the public now and then have a question: what will remain of the park, beloved by the townspeople? Erik van Egeraat, an experienced urban planner, author of master plans for districts and entire cities, an architect who has been successfully working in the Hungarian capital since 1991, knows and sincerely admires it, could not help but ask this question. “There is so much vacant land and unused plots in Budapest,” he wonders. “Why destroy a popular beautiful park when museums can revive historic quarters?”
The alternative offered by the architect is logical, cost effective, environmentally friendly and beautiful at the same time. For a start, van Egeraat's team calculates that all six designated museums are easily located within a kilometer radius of the city center. For example, the first two "immigrants" - the Ludwig Museum, which is moving from the Palace of Arts in the Ferencvaros district, and the New National Gallery, whose collections are now exhibited in the premises in the Buda modernization and expansion which Erik van Egeraat won back in 2008. Actually, it was not only and not so much about reconstruction, but about the completion of construction: the building in which the capital's mayor's office works today, in fact, is a solid, solid, consecrated for centuries, unfinished. The future town hall - originally a boarding house for invalids and war veterans - began to be erected by Fortunato de Prati in 1716, seven years later it was replaced by the Austrian architect of Italian origin Anton Erhard Martinelli. By 1747, the first stage of construction was completed - a wing stretching along the current Varoshkhaz Street (translated from Hungarian - Town Hall). The building was impressive both in scale and decor: a baroque façade with a length of almost 190 meters is decorated with a central tower and three porticos with allegorical statues and bas-reliefs glorifying the victories of Eugene of Savoy and King Charles III over the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the 18th century, the building was reoriented as a barracks for grenadiers, and it became the town hall only in 1894. The original plan of the complex was a rectangular building almost twice the size of the current one, with four symmetrical courtyards. However, for a number of reasons - including because of the city wall that passed almost close to each other - these plans were never implemented, and only at the beginning of the 21st century, the city council finally decided to close the square, building along the Karoi Kerut boulevard, Ferenc Deak square and Gerlotsi street missing north wing. A competition was announced, a winner was chosen, and a deadline for the completion of construction - 2012 - was determined, but although nothing remained of the old city walls for a long time but the remains of masonry below ground level, the project still remains a project. This time for financial reasons: the downturn in 2009 had a strong impact on the Hungarian economy.
Erik van Egeraat's project combines the renovation of a historic building with new construction, which should total about 40,000 m22… The main idea is the maximum permeability of the object, its inclusion in the fabric of urban life by forming new pedestrian routes (it is convenient to go through the town hall from the boulevard to the pedestrian Vaci street and then to the Danube, to the bridges leading to Buda) and an attractive combination of three main functions: cultural, administrative and commercial. Of course, if two large museums move here, the cultural component will receive strong support, but it played a crucial role in the initial project: the central part of the ensemble is occupied by the Forum, a multifunctional space that provides a lot of opportunities for exhibitions, theatrical performances, concerts or conferences. It is here that the architect proposes to place the collections of the Ludwig Museum and the National Gallery. The wing set aside for them - a very suitable term in this case - is precisely something that is wedged into the geometrically correct plan of the historical building with either an airplane or a bird's wing. The square in front of the Forum, covered with a wide hinged roof, should become the main gate of the complex; here it is planned to place a cafe, information services, platforms for organizing various kinds of events. The courtyard of the museum - one of the four courtyards conceived by Martinelli - can also be used for social events, but it is, of course, primarily intended for exhibitions.
According to Erik van Egeraat's proposal, the mayor's office will retain the existing premises and two courtyards - so nothing will interfere with its work. In the same part of the new building, which runs along Istvan Bartsi Street, it is possible to place commercial objects that add attractiveness to the public: shops, apartments, an art hotel, etc.
The powerful, emphatically modern architecture of the new wings only at first glance contrasts with the existing part of the complex and the surrounding urban fabric - in fact, between them, as always with Erik van Egeraat, there are a lot of more or less obvious connections, allusions, precise or free rhymes. The main façade of the ensemble, which stretches along the Karoi Kerut boulevard, is a large-scale metaphor for the movement from old to new, from closeness to transparency. If at the eastern corner it freely echoes the proportions of the original building, adjusting to the correct rhythm of narrow windows, then as we move towards Deak Square, the openings move apart more and more, the piers part and lose their linearity, and now we have before us white silhouettes of trees, not so much covering, how much highlighting the space of the courtyard. Here, by the way, there is another semantic layer: now on the site of this courtyard there is a town hall park, which in the new version of modernization is planned to be left intact, preserving and supplementing its current public functions - fairs and festivals are often held in the park.
The plastic culmination of the project is a transparent corner tower, decorated with "trunks" growing out of the stylized park of the main facade. “The lookout tower shouldn't look like an excuse for what we do,” says the architect. "On the contrary, it should be read as a sign of pride in everything new." But even this completely futuristic structure is sensitive to the historical fabric of the city: fragile, almost ephemeral, it does not dominate the surrounding buildings, but brings new harmony into it. Together with two "neighbors" - the tower of the Anker house, an architectural monument of the early 20th century, and the town hall, from the 18th century, they can form an impressive trio. Adjacent to the tower is the "balcony of the city" - a promenade that runs along the top of the main façade, from where impressive views should also open up.
Erik van Egeraat often defines his projects as "modern baroque" - meaning not style, but "personal design strategy", the complexity and layering of architecture. In the project for the modernization and expansion of the Budapest City Hall, modern baroque vividly interacts with the historical, emphasizing and complementing it. In this context, the proximity within the walls of the ensemble of two such collections as the National Gallery of Old Hungarian Masters and the collection of contemporary art by Peter Ludwig further enhances its symbolism. If we add to this fact the obvious advantages of the project - economic efficiency, the location of the town hall building on the “museum axis” of the city, the sufficiency of the existing infrastructure - it becomes clear why the alternative proposal of Erik van Egeraat brought the discussion around the construction of the museum complex to a new level. And it is meeting with more and more widespread approval.
