Podmaniczky Corner - Office Buildings

Project idea

The corner of Podmaniczky street and Dózsa György street is unused however it's in the middle of a very busy area. It's next to the Nyugati railway station. The zoo, a hospital and museums are close to it so the public transport is very good and frequent. Because of this I thought it was a good place for an office building with a cafe downstairs.

Project description

In the beginning I imagined a huge building shape with the contour of the costruction site in vertical position. Than I started to make this shape more airy and lighter and it ended in two buildings with a terrace on the 1st floor total area above the whole construction site. But with this terrace, the gound floor was too dark, so I finally transformed it into a pergola with glass roof parts. The contour of grassy area follows the zigzag contour of this pergola.

On the ground floor, there is a reception and a cafe which are available for anyone. Both of the buildings have a central core with the elevator and stairs which is reachable only via the reception, so the upper floors can be accessible for office workers only.
All of the office floors are designed to be easy rebuilt according to the needs of the current renter.

Because of the contrast I used black and white. The colours indicate the function. Black is the colour of the buildings only, white is for everything else.
The white colour and the vertical position of the pergola emphasizes the functional change between the ground and the 1st floor.
The building on the right has two empty floors. These could be used as a terrace, or closed until a later construction. White colour shows that these two floors are not built-in.

Technical information

The buildings are made out of fero-concrete pillars, ceilings and curtain wall cells. There is 5x5 meter raster on the whole area. The buildings' floor areas are 18x18 meter.