Tea-House, Orfalu

Architect: Gábor U. Nagy
Text: Jenő Kapy
Photos: Gábor U. Nagy

The building housing Tea-House now used to be a pub as well as a residential building later on functioning as a school and a culture centre. As even rabbits were kept and mushrooms were grown here, the building underwent utmost deterioration. The local community decided to salvage the building. This complex development involves three directions: the garden, the exhibition and the tea-house itself. Just like in traditional monastic gardens, indigenous herbs and spices are grown here with organic methods, without using any kind of chemicals. An integral extension of the herbal garden, the exhibition facilitates the true-life experience of getting to know spices and herbs in an interactive way. The building functions as a tea-house with its carefully designed interior housing lectures and events, whilst the rooms in the loft are going to be suited for conferences after their completion. The complex function of the communal building is based on the so-called „gentle ecotourism”. Architect Gábor U. Nagy argues that tradition is not actually a question of forms: more often than not it is an issue firmly rooted in the current problems of the communities living in this landscape. Thus the real question is how a community is able to preserve its traditions amongst contemporary social conditions.

Architect: Gábor U. Nagy
Structure: Zoltán Bukits
Building engineering: Árpád Lukács
Electrical engineering: László Bognár
Client: Orfalu Község Önkormányzata