Detail of the project ed. 2020

B+B MŰTEREM – RECON­STRUC­TION OF THE THE SAINT MAR­TIN PARISH

Design­er Tamas Berecz DLA
Loca­tion Váci út 91/b, 1139, Budapest, Hungary
Design Team

Tamás Berecz DLA, Atti­la Batári DLA
B+B Műterem Ltd

Year 2017
Pho­to credits

Exter­nal Photos:
m02 — orig­i­nal build­ing, ele­va­tion, pho­to: Tamas Berecz DLA
t16 — planned church, ele­va­tion, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t15 — planned church, ele­va­tion, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t14 — planned church, ele­va­tion, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t03 — planned church, con­text, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky

Inter­nal Photos:
t43 — planned church, new ceil­ing, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t39 — planned church, new altar, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t36 — planned church, new altar, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t27 — planned church, new sacred space, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky
t18 — planned church, new assem­bly space, pho­to: Tamas Bujnovszky

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Homage to social­ist modernism
Mon­u­ment to an era
A promi­nent archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ment dat­ing back to the not so remote past of Hun­gar­i­an social­ism stands on one of the busiest thor­ough­fares of Budapest. Its design­er, István Szabó, became a cul­tic church-builder of the era at the end of his vast­ly pro­duc­tive archi­tec­tur­al career spent in the ser­vice of the dic­ta­tor­ship, when already a pen­sion­er and ask­ing no remu­ner­a­tion for his work. His first church, which even­tu­al­ly func­tioned as a start­ing point for the com­pro­mise con­clud­ed between the Vat­i­can and the Kádár regime, received the bless­ing of Pope Paul VI.
The Saint Mar­tin parish church was the last project of his oeu­vre. It was built in 1985 in the style Cen­tral Euro­pean his­to­ri­ans of archi­tec­ture now refer to as social­ist mod­ernism. Dur­ing the thir­ty years after its con­struc­tion, the envi­rons of the church under­went rad­i­cal changes defined by three main fac­tors: (i) the quar­ter once inhab­it­ed by the social­ist work­ing class dis­ap­peared, while the fac­to­ries and the indus­tri­al plants were replaced by gener­ic, late-post­­mod­­ern office build­ings; (ii) the build­ing itself dete­ri­o­rat­ed due to wear and tear and its tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions grew obso­lete part­ly as a con­se­quence of the economis­ing prac­tice imposed upon the indus­try by the short­age econ­o­my and part­ly because of the gen­er­al­ly poor work morale that dom­i­nat­ed the build­ing sec­tor of the time; (iii) last but not least, the altered role of the Catholic Church also played a part. After the changes of 1989, the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion that had pre­vailed in Hun­gary dur­ing social­ism was fol­lowed by a soci­etal and polit­i­cal restora­tion. These rea­sons togeth­er even­tu­al­ly led to the deci­sion made in 2014 about the recon­struc­tion of the parish church.
The project pro­vid­ed the archi­tects with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­sid­er the func­tions of the build­ing and to rede­fine its dia­logue with its sur­round­ings. They set two major objec­tives: (i) first­ly, they wished to cre­ate a trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the inte­ri­or of the build­ing, so to this effect they ter­mi­nat­ed the exte­ri­or stair­case that was unfit for use by the elder­ly and the phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled. The new entrance was moved to the ground floor, while the adjoin­ing vestibule was designed to func­tion as a start­ing point for impres­sive­ly com­plex spaces: the com­mu­nal area ide­al among oth­ers for wed­dings opens from here, just like the new­ly built stair­case that leads to the upper lev­el of the church inte­ri­or. Beyond the func­tion­al and tech­no­log­i­cal mod­erni­sa­tion, the oth­er goal was (ii) to cleanse the church, which they approached as a kind of ’urban found object’, from the deposit­ed ele­ments that were grad­u­al­ly added to it con­trary to the orig­i­nal design con­cept. In order to realise this, the bell-gable on the west ele­va­tion was demol­ished, the build­ing was stripped of the redun­dant canopies, and the func­tion­less open­ings were walled up.
The expan­sion of the church build­ing can be best likened to pre­ci­sion surgery. As the reg­u­la­tions allowed rather lim­it­ed room for manoeu­vre, the new func­tions were ‘packed into’ a mere­ly two-metre block with a high­ly com­plex spa­tial struc­ture. Thanks to the wall-like com­ple­men­ta­tion of the church’s sculp­tur­al vol­ume and the demo­li­tion of the old exte­ri­or stair­case, the build­ing regained its orig­i­nal crys­talline mon­u­men­tal­i­ty that it had lost in the tight embrace of the sub­se­quent­ly con­struct­ed office build­ings around it. This cor­ner­stone aspect of the design is fur­ther enhanced by the inte­gra­tion of the for­mer­ly free­stand­ing cru­ci­fix into the body of the church.
The archi­tects did not want to dras­ti­cal­ly alter the church inte­ri­or but they made three sig­nif­i­cant addi­tions: (i) they com­plet­ed the altar, (ii) they erect­ed a new chapel in lieu of the old entrance, (iii) and installed a false ceil­ing sys­tem rem­i­nis­cent of the roof struc­ture includ­ed in the orig­i­nal archi­tec­tur­al plans but nev­er actu­al­ly implemented.
The church was unveiled in autumn 2017 and was blessed by Car­di­nal Péter Erdő, who is Arch­bish­op of Eszter­­gom-Budapest and Pri­mate of Hun­gary. The cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing was also attend­ed by Orsolya Szabó, the daugh­ter of the building’s orig­i­nal design­er, who active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project, help­ing the team to evoke the spir­it of István Szabó, while sat­is­fy­ing con­tem­po­rary expectations.
Prof. Dr. Andor Wes­selényi-Garay PhD., habil.
dipl. Arch., dipl. Urban Designer
The archi­tects received the Pro Archi­tec­tura award for design in 2018 and in the same year the build­ing won the House of the Year award in the pub­lic build­ing category.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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