Hungarian firm Napur Architect has been selected ahead of Bernard Tschumi, Dominique Perrault BIG or Zaha Hadid Architects to design a major new museum in Budapest's City Park.
Budapest-based Napur Architect was selected ahead of 14 other firms for the Museum of Ethnography, which will be built alongside a concert hall by Sou Fujimoto and a national art gallery by SANAA as part of a huge new museum complex.
"The Gate of the City Park offers an alternative gate experience," said the architects in their competition entry. The design resembles a giant skateboard ramp, with patterned walls and a grass-covered roof and It is described by architects István Ferencz, Marcel Ferencz and György Détári as a "21st-century Baroque frame".
Called The Gate of the City Park, it will contain several floors of exhibition galleries at both ends and an expansive open space at the centre, while its roof is intended as a new public gathering space. It was also frame an existing monument to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. "The physical and visual division of the building into two parts expresses the duality of the basic function, and also reflects the surrounding city fabric."
The Museum of Ethnography houses more than 200,000 ethnographic artefacts a quarter of which includes the international material; and it also runs the largest archive of the profession containing archived documents, more than 400,000 historical photographs, manuscripts, sound archives and film library. The museum library is a reference library of European rank. The museum's traditional ethnographic collection of national character is internationally outstanding, while its pottery, textile and costume collections are the largest collections of this kind on the continent. Material originated from non-European continents can be found in significant amount only in the former colonial countries; and between Berlin and St. Petersburg - apart from Vienna - there is no city where all continents' cultural relics could be found in this composition and quality. The Museum of Ethnography utilizes this facility of rich and diverse collections by implementing the approach harmonized with the current international museological trends and by adapting the most modern techniques of museography.
For the first time since the foundation of the Museum of Ethnography that is, for over 140 years now, it has become possible to permanently place the museum in a building worthy for the collection, to be built specifically for this function. In addition, the construction of the new building of the Museum of Ethnography will solve another more than half a century problem: by relocating the institution, the Kúria (former Ministry of Justice) building, recently housing the museum, can regain its original function.
The result of the landscape architectural competition aimed at renewing the City Park Budapest announced thanks to the recently closed landscape architectural competition, tens of thousands of square meters of new green area, more than one thousand newly planted trees,a 2-kilometre running track, larger playgrounds, an expanded boating lake, a rose garden and much more will be added to Budapest’s City Park.
According to the winning project of the Garten Studio Kft. landscape architecture office, the concreted over surfaces will be significantly decreased and far more recreational functions will be found in the City Park by 2019, the planned year of its comprehensive renewal.
More trees, larger and more valuable green areas, a running track, and a rose garden in the revamped City Park
