Nursery and Kindergarten, District 13, Budapest

Architect: Csaba Nagy
Text: Ágnes Bechtold
Photos: Tamás Bujnovszky

The building does not reveal its identity at first glance: it is featured by crystallized, white wall surfaces, grey steel window frames and large expanses of glass. It is only the recessed colour elevations, the cut-off corners and the wall surfaces meeting at an obtuse angle that make the mass of the building appear more dynamic. The interior forms of the horizontal configuration – primarily the staircase the characteristic, sculpturesque mass of which winds upward in an irregular way much like a plasticine snail –, the curves of the changing rooms rhyming with it as well as the palette of the faceworks and the furnishings (first of all bright green) and their circular forms (especially circles appearing and reappearing in a variety of colours and forms) that introduce playfulness into this strict order. Although the two institutions are now housed within the same building they function and operate totally separated from each other: they have entrances of their own opening from their shared reception court divided into two parts by a fence.

Architecture: Archikon Kft.
Leading architect: Csaba Nagy
Fellow architects: Botond Benedek, Kata Niszler, Balázs Horváth, EszterMészáros
Interior design: Krisztina T. Major, Bea Horváth Gallai, Ágnes Kádár, BenceVárhidi – Archikon Kft.
Landscape: Barnabás Szakács, Gábor Fehér – Léptékterv Kft.
Structure: Attila Farsang – FRT Raszter Kft.
Framework: Tibor Pintér – Ékiterv Mérnökiroda Kft.
Technical installations: József Kiss, Zoltán Sor – PHQ Kft.
Electrical engineering: Károly Dorgai – Dorterv Kft.
Kitchen technology: Katalin Harangi
Elevator: Sándor Nagy gépészmérnök