Architect: TIMA Zoltán
Hotel Marmara, built on a vacant lot close to Szent István Boulevard, was one of the first, small, newly built city hotels in Budapest. The design of the facade with the mounted brick cladding, wood panels and accentuated cornices strives to achieve a harmony with the eclectic surroundings.
The former two storey building on the plot, with an interior courtyard, was constructed in 1888. It could not have been considered a particularly valuable architectural product even at the time it was built. The sight of the adjoining 15 to 20 meter high blank firewalls was extremely unpleasant in the cityscape. In spite of this, the building permit was difficult to obtain, because the demolition of the old building, located in a protected heritage area within the line of the Grand Boulevard in Pest, was approved by the Office of Cultural Heritage only after many lengthy consultations.
The layout of the hotel focused on the most economic arrangement, namely the greatest number of guest rooms, within the plot of 1:2 side ratio. At the same time, the rotated U-shaped floor plan provided an interior courtyard with the best spatial proportions. The rooms are very small, as required by the developer, but they are equipped to meet four-star standards. The building consists of a basement, ground floor and seven storeys. There are 16 rooms on each floor, accessible through a staircase and two elevators. The plane of the facade on the sixth floor is set back from the streetline, reducing the size of the rooms, but owing to their terraces, these apartments are the highest category units in the building. On the top (seventh) floor, there is a sundeck on the street side and a mechanical room on the other side, farthest from the street. The main entrance of the hotel lobby, the car lift for the underground parking and the service entrance are located on the hardly 19 meter long street front of the ground floor. The service entrance provides a direct connection to the kitchen of the building and the service rooms in the basement as well. The bar of the hotel is also located on the street front. It has an opening glass wall which allows intensive interaction with the street.
The look of the façade, the use of building materials follow the functional purity of the building, but it is also coordinated with the architectural character of the neighbouring, mostly eclectic, buildings of varied forms. The design of the street façade avoids traditional hole architecture and strives to create a harmony of the surfaces, concealing the different proportion of the rather low, 2.85 m floor height. The cornices above every second floor provide fire barriers on the façade.
Location: Budapest V., Nagy Ignác utca 19. Built: 2009 Architect: TIMA Zoltán Associate architects: NAGY Borbála, STEIN Zoltán Interior architect: Yesim Karaca Interior Works Area: 3500 m2
