Specialised Project Category
Orczy Forum City Centre, Budapest, Hungary (Kévés Architects Inc.)
The new city centre called Orczy Forum was built in district No VIII of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The design process of the new centre started with the preparation of a town development plan in 1990, then the designing of a 400-bed hotel to be built at 135 Baross Street began for a Swiss investor in the same year. However, only the foundations of this hotel were laid due to the financing difficulties of the investor. The 9th residential block comprising 160 apartments, which is the last block of the centre, will be built on this lot, partly utilising these foundations.
Orczy Forum City Centre, Budapest, Hungary (Kévés Architects Inc.)
Originally, the centre was built in the eastern part of Hungary's capital, in district No VIII, after the quarters Buda, Óbuda and Pest were merged under the name Budapest in 1872. The district itself and the direct neighbourhood around the site of the new centre were bulit in the late 1800' and the early 1900' on the basis of the plans prepared by the famous architect Ödön Lechner, who prepared the town development plan for the whole of Budapest.
After the Peace Treaty of Trianon following World War I the town development activities were stopped on the site of the new city centre and, following the destruction brought by World War II, the neighbourhood totally deteriorated. At the end of the 1980' a few dilapidated apartments and several industrial buildings could be found in this area, which Kévés Architects Inc. purchased during the years and raised new buildings on the lots taking into account the original division thereof in nine phases.
According to the original town development plan, the city centre should have included a 400-bed hotel, a store, later a shopping centre, a retail building and a garage as well in addition to the office buildings. During the years Kévés Architects Inc., in its capacity as the financial organiser of the city centre development project's implementation, has flexibly adapted itself to the economic changes of the past 15 years and has built the city centre gradually, changing the function of the individual blocks by preserving the original concept of the centre.