Lookout Tower at Naplás Lake

Architect: Robert Gutowski
Text: Mária Tatai
Photos: Tamás Bujnovszky

The lake along Naplás Road, or the Szilas Creek reservoir, was created in 1978 by damming the stream in a marshy valley. The engineering intervention also saved the rich wildlife of the area, and from 1997 the forest-strudel environment was declared a nature reserve. The lake is also the largest standing water in Budapest, and the hill rising above it is now crowned with the construction of a lookout tower, and from then on an architectural sign emphasizes the excursion place on the map of Budapest. The interesting feature of the reddish-colored wooden structure fixed to the concrete plinth is its brilliant mass: an “column” edited on an equilateral triangular floor plan, which is both unusual and regular. The top, 27 meters high, is a triangle corresponding to the floor plan of the lower level, but rotated by 60 degrees. The two horizontal planes are connected by triangular front walls sloping slightly outwards and inwards, and along the edges the wooden beams start and arrive from the vertices of the horizontal triangles. This special form might even deserve a special name: it could be called “Naplás Column,” or even “Gutowski Crystal,” from the designer, if only because it appears in the landscape on an architectural scale, on a concrete pedestal, made of wood. The elements and materials of the structure of the tower, and not incidentally the well-thought-out, clearly visible nodes, make the abstract geometry tactile.

Client: Pilisi Parkerdő Zrt.
General design: Robert Gutowski Architects
Leading architect: Robert Gutowski
Architects: Béla Ákos Szokolay, Hunor László Kovács, Gergely Lőricz
Structure: Dezső Hegyi Dr.
CNC model: Dorothy Borsos, Bence Borsos
Fellow architects: Gáspár Bollók, Barnabás Dely-Steindl
Lightning protection: Ádám Turi
Main contractor: Fitotron-System Kft., Balázs Borsos, Tamás Varga, Barna Borsos
Controlling: István Endrődy