Fruit Processing Plant, Nyíradony

Architect: Dezső Ekler
Text: Rita Tuczai
Photos: Tamás Bujnovszky

Designed by Dezső Ekler, the fruit processing plant is a striking feature of the sandy plain of Nyíradony. Its dark reinforced concrete block rises from the ground in a detailed but powerful, experimental gesture. Its startling volumes and form are a novelty in this landscape. It has no precedents, and it was not even built where it was originally meant to.
Its design stems from tracing the technological process. Its soaring cantilevered front and rear facades are stretched between the entry and exit points of processed fruits. The longitudinal sloping slabs of the two interlocking buildings represent the press phase of the processing procedure. The mutual responses or even the repetitive rhythm of the planes of the huge volume lends dynamics to its static embeddedness in sand. From its slopes, a refreshed architectural zeitgeist might even take off.
Until now, images of the utilization of the plant have been missing from both the builder’s and the municipality’s visual representations on the internet. Nyíradony is one of the most dynamically developing settlements in the region. In the list of its landmarks and sights there is hardly a building that expresses real innovation, apart from the fruit processing plant. To define itself, it needs the exemplary power of modern buildings. The building, rich in sculpturesque values, has survived being taken out of its originally planned spatial context. It speaks in a different way in the fallow, as if it was talking to the canopy of a hidden forest, but its gestures are amplified in its unvarnishedness.

Architect: Dezső Ekler
Fellow architects: Balázs Győri, Bálint Köves
Framework: Orsolya Dudinszky
Structure: István Kovács
HVAC: Zoltán Sor – PHQ Ltd.
Elenctrical engineering: Zoltán Barabás – Fer-Mat Ltd.
Garden: András Győri
Roads: Zsolt Fekete