Dwelling House + Light Transmitting Concrete

Budapest, Hungary

Photo © Tamás Bujnovszky

Photo © Andrea Haider

arkkitehdit: Földes Architects

Location: Budapest, Hungary
Year: 2004

The mass of the brick-house built at the Brook Szilas rises towards the street and the sideyard as a castle-wall.

The street side wing of the “L”-shaped building of mono pitch roof is one-storey, the backyard-wing extending for the back is two-storey. The community places are situated on the ground floor as well as the parents’ bedroom and the double garage. In the protected bend of the building, there is a halfway-atrium-charactered terrace created-this is the center of the building. The living room, the dining room, the glass wall of the staircase and a first floor-loggia open up at that point of the house. The sequence of the living room the dining room and the kitchen, contradicting its small sizes, gives the feeling of spaciousness inside.

The building woven together from horizontal elements has an exciting counterpoint-the narrow and vertical staircase.

On the second floor the “suites” of the two big children can be found. Each has two rooms, a wardrobe, a bathroom and a loggia to ensure the comfort of privacy of the brother and the sister.

The external walls are of reused handmade bricks, the roof covering is titanium zinc, the railings of the loggias are stained pine boards fixed to galvanized metal columns.

We learned that the inner and outer spaces transmitting on each other have some transparent effect. This gave the idea to show the new invention of Áron Losonczi, the light transmitting concrete in the building. We found place for the glass fibrous- concrete block in the horizontal window of the dining room. In the morning the sun rays glimmer through the opaque block while, in the evening, it faces with a warm colored glow for the arriving one.