Health Centre, Budakalász

Architects: Zoltán Horváth
Text: Marianna Berényi
Photos: György Dénes

The Health Centre in Budakalász not only houses new surgeries but also features communal areas where people as well as material and transcendency meet in a spectacular way.
When the local government of the town commissioned Zoltán Horváth to design a new surgery to replace the old deteriorating one in 2012 the architect ambitioned more than just presenting a structure for services. Having surveyed the faculties of the amorphous site which is the result of a series of real estate purchases, Barát Stream trickling on the other side of the street, the pedestrian bridge, the Millenary Monument and the cemetery high above the surgery he decided that by pulling down the former fences he would expand the busy street into a square. His concept came to be justified by his research work as it turned out that the well in the yard of the surgery site had been a key factor in the water supply of the town-dwellers before the construction of the plumbing system. The architect decided to cover this well without hiding it. The point marking the spring has come to function as the main organizing principle of the newly created square and the building as well. It is indeed a starting point of a double spiral which – beyond being the symbol of eternal cyclical conditions and infinity – strings up the neighbouring objects on the same thread, structures of life and death, as well as their associated contents: spring, recovery, rebirth, memory and decay.

Architect: Zoltán Horváth
Fellow architect: Gergely Horváth
Structure: József Demjén
HVAC: László Pacher
Grden and landscape: Réka Izmindi
Roads: Tibor Kiss
Main contractor: Gomép Építőipari Kft