KÖZTI celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Bán Dávid, journalist of Építészfórum/ Architects Forum talked with Tima Zoltán design director and Peschka Alfréd deputy design director about the previous year of Közti, the firm’s plans for the future and the forseeable generation change.
Looking at your designs realized in 2023, it seems as if you had concentrated above all on the region of Lake Balaton and Veszprém. Did it happen accidentally or did you also join the Veszprém-Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture (ECC) project?
Tima Zoltán: Our activity in Veszprém consisted of several projects. On one hand, we worked at that Green City program, which had been on the agenda of several other Hungarian towns as well. Veszprém has an especially large, more than 9 hectares uninterrupted green area in the downtown. The former Püspökkert/Bishop’s Garden lays at its core, next to the Bishop’s Palace, which was transformed into the City Library at the end of the 1990s, designed by Lázár Antal. Püspökkert will be renewed in connection with the reconstruction of the theatre. It is a bit uncared-for and underutilized area nowadays. The former reconstruction of the theatre in the 1980s misused the nicest part of Püspökkert – it is true, that the reconstruction of the building itself turned out to be controversial. Our reconstruction desigm, completed in the past years and prepared with more attention to the original Medgyaszay building, sets right exactly those anomalies that had been regarded differently by our colleagues in 1988. It is interesting to realize, just how much the approach towards historic buildings and urban spaces has changed even in a period of 30-35 years. At that time, it seemed to be a good idea to put some of the functions partly underground, at the expense of the Püspökkert green area. Now, this part will be remodelled and the service functions will be relocated in a neighbouring building, presently out of use. We hope, the city will be able to allocate funds for the reconstruction soon.
Nevertheless, within the Green City program, the rehabilitation of Erzsébet Park and Erzsébet Walkway, located next to Püspökkert, was finished last year, as well as that of the access to the former Calvary Hill (Szent Miklós-szeg) with a new walltop walkway around the hill, and a café building. This locality has a strong connection with the interior garden of the Pannon University, that was separated from the public area with a fence earlier. There has been a total reconstruction in this area, complete with an underground car park, to accomodate the cars that had been parking above ground. This project, though it was implemented at the same time, was privately funded, independent of the ECC program. I have to mention, that on this kind of public open space projects we have always worked with our permanent landscape architect partner, S73 Tájépítész Stúdió, since our project for the reconstruction of Kossuth Square. The Balatonfüred Congress Center also has to be mentioned, which had started independently from the ECC program, but ECC funding for the exhibition areas could be used. Apart from all this, the sailing harbor building, also at Balatonfüred, started to operate last year, though there wasn’t that much hype around it.
Which were the most important milestones of the past year for KÖZTI?
Peschka Alfréd: At the beginning of the past year, we hadn’t seen our full scope of commissions yet, but later our list of projects nicely filled up. Last year started like this year, we came back from holiday to KÖZTI one day earlier in the first days of January, and started to work on an architecture competition project. An important success last year was our winning of an architecture competition for an office building at BudaPart and working on it until the building permit was granted. At the start of the year, we also had the possibility to work on foreign projects. We submitted competition entries for two hospitals and a retirement home in Austria and took part in a major competition for a greenfield residential and office complex in Bratislava. The Slovak developer succeeded to announce such an attractive call that 83 entries were submitted, so there will be a fierce competition.
TZ: The fact that we take part in Central European architecture competitions besides the several Hungarian ones is a kind of proof that KÖZTI, in its renewed form, is capable to target regional projects. About three years have passed since our internal transformation and we feel that this new system has become functional by now. We can be regarded as a large architecture firm even on a Central European scale and have a serious potential of specialists. With our workforce, we can be competitive in Hungary, but also in the neighbouring countries, so we shall be seeking attention in the future in a wider area as well.
With regard to architecture competitions, our great success at the end of the year was the first prize won by KÖZTI’s entry for the renovation of the Zsámbék medieval church ruins and their environment. It had a very complex program which had noticeably shaken up the professional opinion of the architects’ community. The continuation of the project depends on a lot of things, a great many questions concerning architecture and heritage protection still have to be answered, but we hope, that the design process will start soon. It is very good to win architecture competitions, but even better to see them being built.
PA: This competition has clearly indicated for us that our team of mostly young architects specialized in heritage protection, who had had much practice in the reconstruction of historic buildings but this must have been their first really great challenge, are capable to be consistently successful. According to the jury, their winning design is a work of very high professional quality, which is an important confirmation of their talent.
TZ: This team, built up and strengthened in the past three years, has already finished the reconstruction designs of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the project has passed into the construction phase. There are also some smaller, dessert-like projects, connected to Kelemen Bálint, project lead architect. The conservation of the Szádvár castle ruin was finished two years ago and later it got a Media Architecture Award. We like these projects, which require thorough preparation, they may not be very spectacular, but their result can be appreciated by the public.
Besides all this, we have been participating in the Romvándor/Ruin Rover program of Market Zrt. for three years now, where historic ruins or buildings in dire danger of collapse are being regularly chosen for conservation. This way has the medieval church ruin at Aszófő been conserved recently. Aszófő was also Bálint’s project and he had great professional success with it. We have started to work on the conservation design of two more medieval ruins within this program, one at Ádánd and another one at Dörgicse.
Our successes had been slightly overshadowed at the end of the year by the death of architect Hübner Tibor, former director of KÖZTI. Tibor had led KÖZTI from the mid-1990s for almost 10 years. He had great merits in helping KÖZTI to overcome the serious problems of that time successfully, and to go on being the acknowledged architectural design firm it is today.
A year ago, in connection with the annual review, you characterized the year 2022 as fluctuating. How do you regard 2023 compared to that? Have the waves somewhat calmed down or is the sea still heaving?
TZ: The waves had been still crashing last year as well, but talking with colleagues, this didn’t affect only us. Economic difficulties are felt by the architects very early, even the first troubles manifest themselves at the architecture firms. If there is a problem, we meet it first, the building contractors second, but the signs of economic improvement can also be first detected by us. I hope that my optimism is not premature, but I think, this year will not be so fluctuating. I feel firmer ground under our feet and can calculate with our projects better.
What would you see, how would you position KÖZTI in, say five years?
PA: KÖZTI is market leader today in Hungary and I think, this will be the fact in five years time as well. We are in a continuous flow of progress, which can be regarded successful, based on the results of the past three years. In the interview two years ago, we told that our operation was dynamic but fluctuating. This dynamism we have kept and must keep in the future, too. It is important that the talented, young architects at KÖZTI have such superior knowledge which enables them –say in five years time- to take KÖZTI forward on this way, to remain a market leader at home, but in a hopefully normalized economic situation, to have a role in the region or even in Western Europe.
TZ: Naturally, we have to be aware that there will be another generation change within 5-8 years. This was characteristic of KÖZTI several times even in the past. Our presently 35-40-45 year old age group is a very strong team, it is lucky that they have come to KÖZTI at the same time. They will have the future of the firm in their hands if we give them the opportunity.
The complete article can be found at:
https://epiteszforum.hu/2024–kozti75
