Architects: TIMA Zoltán, NÉMETH Tamás
The café building and the wall top walkway ascending Calvary Hill have been built within the framework of the Veszprém Green City project. They are worthy additions to the renewed cultural center of Veszprém, European Capital of Culture for 2023, with their simple design, high quality facades, building materials and interesting details.
Calvary Hill is one of the longest inhabited parts of Veszprém, archaeological finds proved that people had been living there since the prehistoric times. The Szent Miklós/Saint Nicholas parish church had been built on the dolomite rock hill in the 13th century, later it was devastated during the Turkish occupation, today only its ruins can be seen. In the 18th century, a calvary was built on the top of the hill, above the ruins of the church, with access from the slightly sloping southern side of that time. During the 19th century, nine houses were built around the foot of the Szent Miklós/Calvary Hill on the western and northern side, their hill side courtyards/walls bordered the dolomite rock in many cases. The houses had been hit by bombs at the end of the Second World War, they were demolished and their plots were partly landscaped, but their retaining walls of mixed (stone/brick) structure have been retained up to now.
A preliminary design for the environment friendly renewal of the Veszprém Cultural District was prepared by KÖZTI Zrt. in March, 2018, later a building permit design package was compiled for the complex reconstruction of the Theatre grounds, Calvary Hill, Erzsébet Park and Erzsébet Walkway. This project included the establishment of a new café in the western part of Megyeház Square, at the bottom of Calvary Hill, connected to the existing retaining wall system in need of renovation. Along the renovated/rebuilt/completed retaining walls, on the western side partly in a cantilevered position outside the plane of the wall, a wall top walkway has been designed to facilitate access to the ruins of the historic church. Stairs connect the walkway to Megyeház Square and accessible ramps to Egyetem Street.
The single story café building is separated from the wall top walkway by the external, open corridor of the service entrance. This small, but distinct division between the fair face concrete facade of the Café and the natural stone clad wall of the walkway is important from the semantic aspect as well, it refers to the houses once located there. The walkway, past the accessible ramp-bridge, continues around the contour of the Café as a cantilevered structure, then it descends to Megyeház Square by stairs built along the eastern side of the building. The cantilevered part functions as a canopy as well, above the glass perimeter wall of the Café, equipped with large sliding doors. The retaining wall-like look of the Café is enhanced by the non-walkable green roof, adjusted to the fall of the existing terrain and the way it continues in a real retaining wall in the east, fitting into the hillside. The terrace in front of the opened facades is in direct connection with the refurbished pedestrian areas of Megyeház Square. The interior, behind the glass sliding doors, can seat 70-80 customers, complete with the adequate number of toilets. The service entrance opens from the external but hidden corridor, there is an interior passage to access the service areas of the café, the staff changing room and toilet, the waste storage area, the cleaners room, the equipment room and the backside area of the counter.
The solid external walls of the Café are made of fair face reinforced concrete with internal thermal insulation, the partition walls are mounted drywall panels. The interior of the café has fair face concrete surfaces and also special decorative cladding. The cantilevered walkway of steel structure, running around the building at the height of the roof slab, is faced with powder coated metal sheets the parapet is either solid or perforated with a special pattern. Its architectural design and details are similar to the bridge of the wall top walkway and also to the cantilevered part of the walkway in Egyetem Street. When designing the layout and structure of the wall top walkway, the most important aspect for the architect and landscape architect was the preservation of the existing natural and built elements of the terrain (dolomite rock walls and the connected stone/brick retaining walls) and the reuse of the building stones.
Location: Veszprém, Komakút tér 4. Built: 2023 Architects: TIMA Zoltán, NÉMETH Tamás Associate architects: BÜKI Dávid, DOMJÁN Éva, MOLNÁR J. Tibor, SKARDELLI Mátyás Landscape architect: MOHÁCSI Sándor, TAKÁCS Dániel PhD (S73 Kft.) Structural engineers: VÁCZI Péter, BECKER Ádám, HAJTÓ Zoltán (Planwork Kft.), NAGY Anna HVAC engineers: SZAKÁL Szilárd, RÉTI János Electrical engineers: RITZL András, MÁRAMAROSI András Area: 150 m²
