Winery Building on Somló Hill by Dezső Ekler and his Exhibition in Eger

The expositives below are unusual in our periodical, as they present a new building and a current event in a different way than usual. At the end of September an exhibition was opened in the Kepes Centre, Eger, documenting the activities of Dezső Ekler as an architect. And within a short time a complex of several buildings on Somló Hill designed by him is about to be completed to integrate the agricultural units and visitor centre of St Helen’s Winery and Kreinbacher Champagne Winery.

Kreinbacher Champagne Winery and St Helen’s Winery, Somló Hill

Architect: Dezső Ekler
Text: Eszter Götz
Photos: Tamás Bujnovszky

The winery and champagne winery on Somló Hill designed by Ekler Dezső has not been completed yet, but photos showing it have already toured architectural world-press. On Somló Hill artificial mounds are seated on certain building parts, a green roof creeps above the concrete structure, whilst concrete walls pierce with bubble formations breathe visibly, much in the same way as the champagne and wine made here. There is non-stop communication between the outside and inside, light and air, sight and atmosphere bursting up from below, and radiating from above downward. Enlargement and analogy are simultaneously present in the concept and the material. The sun, earth, stone, soil all contribute to the ripening of the wine. These forces do appear in the buildings, with radiating power, somewhere cantilevered and jutting out, just like a champagne ripening winery, elsewhere sturdily looking downward, as in the case of the cellar house of the winery. Once it is the view of the surrounding hillside vineyard that offers panoramic vista, other times the other buildings do. The house and the landscape contribute to the shaping of the environment in unison, having mighty powers working within both of them. Ekler turns the procedures taking place in the womb of the earth into a sight. Inside he shows technology, the process whereby grapes ripen into wine, but it is also embedded in the atmosphere of tectonic movements, placing them onto a circular route with an impression as if a whirlpool moving downwards would organise the space.

Architect: Dezső Ekler, Ekler Építész Kft.
Fellow architects: Árpád Koncz, Gyöngyi Berta, Balázs Győri, János Gatter, Veronika Katona, Dalma Kiss, Bálint Berki
Structure: E&H Kft.
HVAC: PHQ Kft.
Electrical engineering: Libella Kft.
Interior design: Ekler Építész Kft., BIVA Kft.
Landscape: Bojza Bt.
Main contractor: Pannon Épszer Kft.
Client: Kreinbacher Pezsgőpincészet Kft., Szent Ilona Borászat Kft.

On This Side of Architecture and Beyond
Dezső Ekler’s Exhibition in Kepes Institute, Eger, September 21st–December 31st

Text: Anna Zöldi

The title of the exhibition presenting Dezső Ekler’s oeuvre is an expressive one: On This Side of Architecture and Beyond – which means that he actually studies the essence of architectural creation whilst distancing himself from the concept of building as an object which may be judged by the standards of visual aesthetics. The result of creation is of course an object which mediates the message in a complex way but the spectacle is by all means a basic constituent of the effect mechanism. To put in another way: the building-object must be also beautiful – whatever we mean by beauty. Architecture, however, is not beautiful or ugly: only reflecting one. It may appear smoothing or upsetting, it could resonate with the Zeitgeist, or may as well counteract it, by all means it is civilisation reflecting to its own internal changes through it: to put it short, architecture is materialised philosophy.
The exhibition of Ekler in Eger overcomes these obstacles in an elegant way. Entering it we are welcome by an imposing model of a building also having exhibitional function: it is his latest design, the iconic building of the winery on Somló Hill. This installation obviously embodies the essence of the joint concept of the curator, Gerda Széplaky and the artist, meaning that architectural product is nothing else but the „enlargemen” of archetypes living in the collective consciousness or subconscious. The „slice of building” limited to the architectural designs enlarged to the scale of the model representing it in a true-life way the current phase of the process of reasoning, whilst also interpreting it: the world model of the artist and with him that of people in the 21st century formulated in space. It is a painful tension, dynamism bursting up sharply which is unable to free itself from its captivity in earth – the metaphor of the seeking of ways and means of the western culture. The topic-based structuring of the exhibition unfolds this metaphor and makes it experiencable. The logic of thoughts is evident even without the ample interview texts enriching the visual material which is not only an individual world concept – it nicely translates the change which has taken place in architectural thinking concerning its relationship with space and form, not only in Hungary, but also internationally.