Hungary’s building of the year is quite an unusual design – PHOTOS+VIDEO
For the 16th time this year, the most outstanding architectural designs and their executions were recognised at the Media Architecture Award’s gala, organised by the Hungarian Architecture Forum.
At the beginning of this year, we already presented you a strange and futuristic building in Hungary, the House of Hungarian Music, featured on the World Architecture Community’s list as one of the best and most anticipated buildings of this year. We have another surprise; a strange-looking building, which won an award for its creative use of material.
Due to the covid situation, the gala was held online, of course, in the second half of February, writes szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu.
According to the announcement issued by MTI,
almost 180 works and designs were competing with each other in 2020, from which 5-5 finalists were chosen
before the award gala by an international pre-jury in both categories of buildings and plans/drafts.
The pre-jury was led by Dutch Indira van’t Klooster, director of ARCAM – Amsterdam Centre for Architecture. Brendan Cormier aided him from Canada/UK, Stefan Ghenciulesco from Romania and Csaba Nagy, the leading designer of the Hungarian company Archikon.
According to the chairman of the jury, the projects chosen this year represent a high architectural quality that we can be proud of, even on a European level.
Hunor Albert Szántó, with his work on the Landscape-Restauration Centre, brought home the 2020 Media Architecture Award for best plan/design. His plan, actually, won several prestigious awards already. It calls our attention to seek solutions and materials that do not harm our environment and cause the least possible damage in these times when global warming becomes a more urging issue every day.
However, the best building award winner was a much bigger surprise for the general public having little knowledge of architecture. The team of Konkrét Stúdió took the award for best building for the design of a family home in Üllő.
At first glance, the building chosen as Hungary’s best can look a bit strange; however, a
house covered with black corrugated sheet proved to be the best design of the past year in Hungary.
The building was presented together by the designer and the client, making it even more apparent that the house perfectly fits its function. The outer cover of the black corrugated sheet can be a weird choice for a family house at first. However, the designer demonstrated that it is a creative and sophisticated alternative. Furthermore, this particular matter is used and liked by Hungarians, argued the jury.
Read alsoTime travel around Budapest; how it looked in the past century vs now – PHOTOS
Source: MTI
I don’t think Grand Designs will be rushing to film this one.
See a thousand of these cheap looking barn/garage styled houses on HOUZZ and Pinterest. One for sale similar to it here in NS Canada…been on the market for at least 2 years, seems no one wants it when they can have a gorgeous old style Salt Box or Cape Cod with beautiful hand made solid wood trim, hand made cedar shingles on the outside, and real wood plank floors, like my own house, cut from my own land.
It looks like a decorated barn rather than a house for a human family to live in!
I call it the ‘shipping container look’. But then, who wants to live in an oven?
However, I am certain that there would be places on the planet that such a structure would be the best possible material for say, where there is always hard frozen snow hitting buildings. But where it is also very cold with high winds. When I was doing construction up in the Belcher Islands from Sept to June with my high-school students we got our materials shipped up to Nunavut on sea barges & those metal containers are called “sea-cams ” up there. Everything stayed safe, (from theft) and dry despite the severe weather & -28 to -43 temps. We would shovel for a few hours to get the doors open & everything inside was just fine. Other materials had to be flown in on Dash 8s but tht was stuff that mostly got forgotten in the planning stages. And food etc. of course.
The goal should always be to build the correct structure with the right materials for the specific location. And then make it long lasting, safe, beautiful and affordable. Within those confines, each to his own.