Ilcsi Beauty Parlour, Budapest

Architects: Attila Korompay, Ádám Hatvani
Text: Eszter Galamb
Photos: Balázs Danyi

Although Ilcsi branded Beautifying Products are traded in more than 40 countries all over the world, and hundreds of cosmetics parlours use them throughout Hungary, the enterprise has opened its very first independent centre and show-room in Budapest just now. Intensely trading its own cosmetic products, the company which is now internationally acknowledged and has already been awarded several prizes of excellence commissioned designers of its headquarters and showroom to translate the mission of the enterprise itself into the language of architecture. Stripping the original room to its bare walls was only the starting point of the new architectural concept: as a result, the exposed structural beauty of the more than a century old tenement house standing in Buda smoothly cooperates with the functions of the parlour. The reception area is accessible via a bridge spanning over the sunken garden followed by a wooden reception counter and a brand shop which doubles as a showroom. The versatile intimacy of various rituals of beautification has been promoted to act as the chief organizing agent of space here. Function boxes made of wood and plexi are used to separate various activities that make up a kind of miniature complex organized along a geometrical linear composition. Crystallized forms and materials used here feature simplicity which forms harmonious contrasts with the raw untreated beauty of the masonry of the old structure and the roughness of the industrial materials the fixtures were made of.

Architects: Korompay Attila – Térhálózat, Hatvani Ádám – sporaarchitects
Fellow architect: Németh Nóra
Electrivcal engineering: PT-Engineering
HVAC: Miral_Paumann Márk
Lighting: Farkas János – Erco
Garden design: Varga Tibor, Kiss Blanka