Gerecse Nature Park Visitor Center, Péliföldszentkereszt

Architect: Kristóf Dankó
Text: Zoltán Dragon
Photos: Kristóf Dankó

The problem is not new: how can a voluminous text that is significant in its words and thoughts be passed on to as many people as possible, with as few mistakes as possible? The building and exhibition of the Gerecse Nature Park Visitor Center in Péliföldszentkereszt provide a possible answer to this. On the site of an old ruined church, Prince Primate Imre Esterházy built the baroque church in 1735. The desire of the later princely primates was to find the ecclesiastical order that bears the fate of the place in its heart. The Nazarenes and Paulines were followed in 1913 by the Don Bosco Salesian Society, which soon used the buildings as its center. The architect of the Gerecse Nature Park Visitor Center, Kristóf Dankó, started working for a company renovating the monastic buildings in Péliföldszentkereszt during his university years. The designer made several drawings during the field trip, the goal was to build an atrium, bell tower building throughout. The initially sketched wood-paneled modernist block was replaced by a high-roofed ensemble with Greco-Roman roots that better suited the built heritage of the area. The visitor center is an inn in the Roman sense: it rises at the crossroads of roads, its atrium design invites you to relax, the small arboretum of its garden to study and marvel. The interior design solutions of the buildings are characterized by minimalism, such as an open deck chair solution.

Architect: Kristóf Dankó
Structure: Zoltán Sziklai
HVAC: Géza Hivessy – Hivessy és Társa Bt.
Electrical engineering: Márton Mayer – Mayer-Elektro Bt.
Roads: László Bukovics – Útvonal Kft.
Environment rehabilitation: Márta Seprődi-Egresi