Hármashatárhegy: An airfield and a hiking spot – Reloaded

The function of the project is to serve the Airfield of Hármashatárhegy, and its gliding purposes, the design proposal of Complex 1 is composed of two existing Hangars, that are to be renovated and remodeled, and adding two masses to serve the purpose of housing the program that is composed of entertainment, relaxation, and administration spaces to the visitors and the project’s and/or site’s users. The Activities of entertainment and relaxation is housed by spaces of restaurants, cafes, small pools, sauna, showers, changing rooms, resting area, congregation areas, lobbies, offices, workshops, lecture halls and storages.

Project name: HAR (Hármashatárhegyi Airfield Redevelopment) Part I
Location: 1028, Budapest, Hungary
Year of the planning: 2018
Area in m2: 7500 sqm

The hill as named after being within the Borders of Three Mountains, which historically was the meeting point of the formation of the city of Budapest, as each hill of the three came out from a different county and region, of which one was of Buda, the second was of Óbuda and the third is of the Pest County, which the three met at this point of land in the 19th century.

So to celebrate this site value of the location, the main site composed a fractional representation of these three hills to house the activites of Entertainment, Spa, Workshops and their services, and definitely emphasize the site’s main potential activity, the Hármashatárhegy Airfield itself, and its aviation purposes.

The site being worked on has a very good topography. A flat airfield, low hills, and moderatly high hills make a great composition of nature. So many people use the site for walking their dogs, hiking, picnic, biking, paragliding …etc 

So as a design strategy, the two existing hangars are renovated and remodeled, and two new masses have been added from a total of three, of which the latter is to be for a future expantion. The two new masses are brick-cladded buildings of 500 sqm and 700 sqm consequentively sitting on the southern-east side of the 7,500 sqm plot, where it is a bit familiar in the region, to have less building footprint in a site that is on a forest land or a natural side, and that somhow was the reason to build there, due to the existing infrastructure, to cut short any building on a virgin land, as to promote the environmental atmosphere of the site and promote the great open air landscape that is on site, where the HAR celebrates a 5200 sqm of landscape which makes up around 70% of the site, whereas the functions of the buildings are devided on three and two floors, respectively, to use up to an equal of around 60% of net area of the site with only a 16% footprint (of the four buildings combined, and it is noteworthy that the building are to be erected on an existing infrastructure). The HAR complex is mostly occupied by entertainment and spa facilities in building D and offices and commercials in building C and ofcourse the dedicated service spaces such as electrical room, mechanical rooms (Plant Room) and dedicated storages.

HAR CONFORMS NOT ONLY TO THE HÁRMASHATÁRHEGY, BUT TO ITS ENVIRONMENT, AND TO THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE FROM THE HILLY SECOND DISTRICT TOO.

It is also worth mentioning that it was an early vision of the designer to have an intended integration of the revitalizating activities that are added to the hangars, such as cafeteria, lounges, and spa with the site’s main function, which is the airfield, that is designed in a way that impulses and trigers a visual connection with the hangars, and the fascinating landscape of the Hill of Hármashatár Hegyi. To celebrate the latter, and to also celebrate the beauty of Budapest from the heights of the hill, an observation tower is to be proposed on the highest peak of it.

The experiences and activities intended to be given to the users of the Hármashatárhegyi, through the design of the built and unbuilt environment and spaces are meant to be unforgetable and inevetible, through providing new methods to act through the same activities. The aim behind this is to revitalize the Hármashatár Hegy district and make it the spiced up zone that would influence not only the Second District, but also the whole city of Budapest.

And the project intends to achieve the following:
1: Develop the gliding activities, and revitalize/redesign the existing hangars
2: Initiate a camping site in the middle plain and fascilitate the functionality of camping within the pine woods.
3: Facilitate the activities of Paralgliding and create workshop spaces, near the training field. and also Cycling workshops and storages
4: To Facilitate Hiking, landscape features including shading and resting areas will be supplied throughout the designated hiking routes.
5: The Picnic friendly hill, lacks the needed landscape features, thus, the design will take care of the needs of a memorable picnic
6: The high tides of the wind serves as a great Kite attraction, with the scenery of the fascinating pine forests around
7: The huge area of the site is hard to be covered by a group of people trying to enjoy every bit of Hármashatárhegyi, thus Cable Carts are to be designed to connect the main attractions
8: create Event friendly spaces within the built environment and the landscape scenaries for the intended activities to be celebrated
9: Create Spa activites, to house meditating and relaxing activites for the tiring experiences existing on the site including baths, massages. etc
10: Facilitate the pedestrian movement on the plains and throughout the forests in a well manner by creating resting spaces along the way.
11: Create Entertainment facilities in the woods, including ziplines, and other facilities, by maintaining a minimum building footprint on site
12: Create catering facilities and temporary Pavilions for when needed

The HAR complex is highly responsive to the air flow at Hármashatár-Hegy, to maximize the cross ventilation and natural flow within the building through the considered punctured courtyards that face the forest behind the project that acts as a wind barrier and reflect the cold breezes back into the project, and the tilted roof as well maximizes a 100% rain water harvestment.

The HAR complex is responsibally responsive to solar energy, not only through active systems, but also through the passive design of the roof, mass orientation, and fenestration. HAR’s roof is designed to be tilted at a certain angle and the masses are oriented in throughly to maximize the amount of captured sun light and turning it into power through the roof installations of the PVC all over the roof top. HAR’s solar harvesting doesnt stop there, the Facades are designed to eliminate the direct solar gain, instead every place is lit through north light. The northern facade has above 60% of glazing, whereas the southern/eastern and western overlooking facades have these small narrow slits of triple glazed glass that forms nothing more than 25 percent of that certain facade. Not to mention the Cavity External Insulated walls, this way, the inner spaces of HAR are far from heat loss and heat gain problems in an optimum way.

The structure of the the complex was decided after an intensive study among five different initial possibilities, where it was concluded to select the structural framework of the HAR project, for Building C + Buildling D, the selection was a system that is a hybrid of two RC elements, a skeleton frame, and shear walls. This system was selected due to its efficiency for this project when compared to the other alternatives, as it provides the flexibility within the inner spaces that the skeleton frame offers, and also the good bracing that the shear walls offer. This option would be optimum for the HAR function.

The building aims to achieve multiple goals among which political goals which are to stronger bonds withing the European Union, as the project aims to host the activities EGU (the European Gliding Union).

The project does also aim to attract more users to this beautiful natural feature in the city of Budapest, there comes the economic goal, which is actually a main goal, since the building offers services to the public which is around 80% of the people visiting the site, and also the 15% of the users that are employees which means it is providing their families a living. One of the main target user group of HAR Complex is the customers, discussed in the second part of the previous chapter in the user types, as Clerks that form 15% of the user types, the Customers, that make up around 50% (the 60% of the the Public Users in the whole project’s ration).

The HAR Complex overall construction cost is to be estimated around 6,303,329 Euro which equivalent to 2,051,368,211 HUF.

The 7500 sqm plot in District II is roughly estimated to be worth of 779,793 Euro would be provided by the Ministry of Planning in Hungary (Hungarian Goverment). Although the cost of construction is mostly dependent on the quality of the materials used for the construction and their originating location, and as discussed before, for the project to succeed it is better to consume locally available materials and assign local experienced labor. The Structure of the project, on the other side, the skeleton frame and structural shering walls would form the highest concern in the cost estimation process. Not to mention that the preparation period would not cost a lot of money, since it was a competition held by BME. Therefore, there are not a lot of cost measures to be taken into consideration in an extra manner.

Contact: Delovan Delawer, +36204321267, de************@gm*.us
Credits list: Architect: Delovan Delawer