Extension of the Debrecen University, Faculty of Technology, First Stage

Architects: Antal Puhl, Péter Dajka
Text: András Bán
Photos: Zoltán Skrabák

The complex housing the Faculty of Technology, Debrecen University, the campus in Ótemető Street is slightly far from the city centre and was built in Sámsonikert, a residential zone of a predominantly single-storey houses since 1966. Because of the existing site boundaries extension was gradual and thus now covers the majority of the area with 1-5-10 storey educational and ancillary buildings. Conditions of potential extensions and modernizations were thus defined by these faculties. As a result, the design contest published in 2007 contained the revision of the site and the campus owing to the increasing number of students and the outdatedness of the building because of the changing concept of „university”. The winning design is „building inward”. Conceived by Antal Puhl and Péter Dajka, this ensemble does not turn to the street fronts, but faces the inner area surrounded by buildings, viewed from where it presents the interrelated order of educational buildings, laboratories, dormitory, canteen and assembly hall. The structuring of the design was not only justified by the character of the complex, but also by the uncertainty of previously defining the individual construction stages amongst changing conditions of tendering. Approaching the campus and making a tour of the site the intention to change is perceptible and tactile: blocks with more integral design and coordination were built next to the former buildings featuring careful detailing. The lab building and the three auditoriums are strung along the circulation axis parallel with the street front. The spaces of these two blocks do not predefine processes going on inside: the labs are spacious cubes, the lecture halls are rigid amphitheatre-like rooms furnished with rows of desks to serve frontal teaching to host large audiences, lacking decoration equipped with contemporary technology. Both the rooms used for educational purposes and the circulation units are restrained and functional, ready to be occupied by the next generations to come who will make them their home and thus modify their characters to their liking.

Leading architects: Prof. Antal Puhl DLA, Péter Dajka
Project architects: Tamás Huszár, Katalin Füzesi
Fellow architects: Dániel Berecz, Annamária Csirmaz, Ágnes Drabant, Ágnes Horváth, Kalcsó Kitti Kassáné
Structure: Márta Hatolkay, Zsolt Kalmár
HVAC: András Oltvai, Tamás Oltvai
Electrical engineering: Zoltán Ivanics, Attila Mészáros
Landscape, environment: Anikó Andor, Sarolta Torma
Roads: Imre Gulyás
Public utilities: Tamás Orosz, Miklós Bartha