Tenement House with 27 Units, Kőbánya

Architects: Katalin Vonnák, Györgyi Csontos
Text: Eszter Götz
Photos: Viktor Rozmann

A solid and yet playful residential building has now appeared amongst the old patinated and deteriorating buildings in the industrial zone of Kőbánya. With its four storeys and a length of 90 metres it could also function as an accentuated spatial wall much in the same way as the surrounding old tenement blocks but it is not that: it stretches along right in the middle of a garden. Kata Vonnák and Györgyi Csontos treated the design task of the tenement house with 27 units as a genuinely experimental project. For the designer architects it has been certain from the very start that they did not want to contain the units in one block: instead, they proposed a long structure spanning the entire length of the site like the style of the surrounding tenement houses built between the two wars, and also the ones in its next-door neighbourhood. The entire spectacle and also the atmosphere of the house is defined by the colourful parapet on both sides. The dynamic green and yellow palette and the simple cement concrete sheets easy to clean define the tracery of the house altogether. As a result, instead of being rich in details, the structure is an ornament of its own: thanks to the rhythm of the rows of decks and the colourful components the spare, monotonous block-type design has turned into a natural and yet exciting phenomenon.

Leading architects: Katalin Vonnák– Vonnák és Társai Építész Stúdió, Györgyi Csontos– MIXA Stúdió
Fellow architects: Gergely Takács, Dávid Krakomperger, Irén D. Kriszt, Dorottya Seenger – Vonnák és Társai Építész Stúdió; Barbara Virág, Gábor Percz, Dániel Petheő, Bendegúz Sánta – MIXA Stúdió
Structure: Pál Bécser – MTM Mérnökiroda
HVAC: Gábor Tóth – COZero
Electrical engineering: Marianna Czeglédi, Gábor Kánai
Fire protection: Károly Gombik, Bendegúz Csuba
Soil mechanics: Márton Szecsey – MTM Mérnökiroda
Client: Isogeneral