Health Centre, Csomád

Architects: József Kolossa, Bartha Katalin Kolossáné, András Weiszkopf
Text: Sándor Csontó
Photos: Tamás Bujnovszky

As of today, one can clearly feel an increasingly heightened social sensitivity of contemporary architecture: an approach focussing on local and genuine needs instead of mega-scale investments and developments, high-brow philosophies and gestures of leaving signs behind. Decision-makers in Csomád know something indeed: a couple of years ago they had already found the team of architects that tailor-made the individual buildings to meet social and environmental needs and design the venues of communal life here according to such principles. Most recently, the project of the Health Centre also proves this. On the site behind the Mayor’s Office the kindergarten and the primary school buildings are seated perpendicularly to the main road along a gently sloping pedestrian path axis, Now the Health Centre has been erected in front of them. Significantly retraced back from the street line, the complex configured as a U shape joins the community house with its open wings. This arrangement offered the design for a would-be main square and maybe even that of a new office building. Its forms have been inspired by the well-proportioned rectangle of the domus of Roman aristocrats in which the open and centrally positioned atrium lets in natural light and fresh air. The passage with its spacious gateway, however, evokes the traditional extensive farms of local farmers with spacious yards. Surrounded by transitory zones, the courtile features a large-size and continuous but subdivided wrap-around glass expanse which permits views and also lets in natural light. The timber structure, the planks of the brown stained eaves extend it by a metre to float onto the exterior facade. From here the white plasterwork continues in bands vertically smoothed with iron, which in turn nicely rhymes with the soil of the surrounding well-groomed fields ploughed in a system of parallel lines. The same kind of playfulness further enhances and reinforces the values of the building as well as its easy-to-accept scales.

Architects: József Kolossa DLA, Bartha Katalin Kolossáné, András Weiszkopf
Fellow architects: Lilla Árkovics, Annamária Babos, Dániel Csöndes
Graphic design: Dóra Máthé
Structure: László Mózes
HVAC: Zoárd Mangel
Electrical engineering: Tamás Piller
Main contractor: Progress-B 90 Zrt.
Client: Csomád Önkormányzat Polgármesteri Hivatal