Rethinking Spaces of Retail: Skála Metró at Nyugati Square
14 – 17. November 2013.

Venue: 1053 Budapest, Kossuth Lajos utca 14-16.
Guest: Failed Architecture (Amsterdam)

The workshop and the lectures are held in English. The public events are open and free of charge.

PUBLIC EVENTS

THURSDAY (14.11.)
17:00 – 18:30 Skála Metró in the past and today – Lecturers: Dániel Kovács architecture-historian, Zsófia Szabó (Skála Metró Kft.) and Borbála Bagi (Terézváros Municipality)
19:00 – 20:00 The transformation of commerce. Lecturer: Pál Baross real estate advisor (Budapest Municipality)

FRIDAY (15.11.)
09:30 – 10.30 Nyugati Station and its surroundings in the urban fabric. Lecturer: Dávid Bán urban anthropologist
18:00 – 19:30 Challenges of the building from the viewpoint of the Architect. Lecturers: Zsolt Alexa (Minusplus), Tamás Szentirmai (Pontlabor). Moderates: Levente Polyák

SATURDAY (16.11.)
09:30 – 10:30 The Everyday Death Star: working inside, and looking out from Skála Metró. Mátyás Dunajcsik, writer, essayist, editor-in-chief of literary fiction at Libri Kiadó (8th floor)
10:30 – 11:30 Chinese retailers in Budapest and in the Skála department stores.
Lecturer: Linda Szabó economic anthropologist (Central European University)

SUNDAY (17.11.)
16:00 – 17:00 Exhibition opening, public presentation of timeline.
17:00 – 18:30 Public debate with students and experts. Moderates: Failed Architecture

Our guests lecturer on the first event of the Adaptive City workshop series organized in the Coming Soon! Project Gallery is Failed Architecture from Amsterdam. Failed Architecture aims to aims to open up perspectives on urban failure and dubious architecture, from what it’s perceived to be, what is actually happening and how it’s represented to the public. FA believes that there is a demand for more holistic, 360-degree observations that lay bare the downsides of urban development and architecture instead of just looking at the physical results produced by architects. Next to an ongoing online exploration and live lectures and debates, FA conducts research workshops on site. These have been carried out in a variety of cities, amongst which Berlin, Nottingham, Sofia, Tallinn, Porto, Copenhagen and Belgrade.

In Budapest, the Failed Architecture Workshop will address the Skála Metró building and its environment at Nyugati Square. The building, once the most modern department store of the city, has been witnessing the transformation of commerce and shopping habits in the 90s and 2000s, sharing the fate of many other department stores of the 80s. New functions emerged, but they didn’t last for different reasons. Whole floors stood empty for years. Today, after the long years of uncertainty, this emblematic building is almost fully leased, and a rehabilitation plan for it’s surroundings has just been approved in the past weeks: the building is again at a turning-point of it’s history. Together with a group of participants, FA performs a multiple-day research that breaks down the history of this specific case. By analyzing different layers that influence it – the built environment, the social context, the economics, the reputation and the politics – a physical timeline is created. The timeline shows the history of the case from various, interconnected angles. The participants conduct the research with FA’s guidance, the input of local experts and their own investigations.