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The main mission of the Budapest Music Center is to introduce Hungarian musicians and music to the world.
To do this, we needed to build an institution in which there are many functions.
In other words, the studios here charge a fee, the halls can be rented out for a fee, et cetera.
There were some basic functions that we knew would take up a lot of space in the building,
so we had to determine those first, and this was important for the BMC as well.
One of these functions is the concert hall; it was obvious from the beginning that this would be built in the old inner courtyard.
The other one is the jazz club and restaurant. This is a multi-purpose space, serving as a restaurant by day and a jazz club at night.
In addition to the jazz club, the other space that is very important is the music library,
which previously was housed in Lonyay street, as well as BMC’s offices.
This conference room where we are now is, in effect, the inverse of the outer corner element, the interior equivalent.
Here, in essence, the torn down corner has been rebuilt in reverse.
Here, when we were ready with the structure, we were left with a very interesting spatial experience, with many planes joining together.
When this room was standing here without the wooden paneling, it was still very powerful, in other words.
We simply emphasized this spatial experience;
in this room there is altogether only one material used in various geometric placements using various processes.
This space is very important because this is where we arrive when we step in the building;
there are good views from both directions, and we can see down Matyas street all the way to the jazz club.
There are three internal spaces that we modeled. This first one is the entrance hall, where we are now,
the concert hall, and the jazz club. These are the most important from an interior design point of view.
And we designed these spaces in parallel with the architectural renderings;
we made the modifications at the same time and this is how the space got its final form.
This concert hall was built as an acoustically pure hall.
As a result, since we kept the original walls, which are 60-70 cm (24-28 inches) thick,
these already comprise an acoustic mass that is very important in an acoustic hall of this type.
In general, in modern concert and opera halls, this type of acoustic balance is reached by
placing wooden or some other type of panels on the walls in a random fashion.
At first, we considered something similar as well, but then we decided to stick with this much more honest approach,
by showing these old walls, where the old openings were bricked up for structural reasons.
We used the old bricks for this purpose. This resulted in the kind of random surface necessary for the acoustics,
so really all we needed to do was strengthen the existing walls and clean them up, and this gave the concert hall its ambience.
The other, very important aspect in an acoustic hall, is that in this courtyard, no two opposite walls were parallel with each other,
which is necessary to achieve perfect acoustic balance, thus we had to avoid creating even, smooth walls.
We thought it would be important from an architectural design point of view to maintain the courtyard feel in the concert hall;
for that reason we wanted to have natural light in the hall.
This was achieved with the parallel tracks of skylights above; this has practical reasons as well:
during the day, natural light serves as the source of light, which conserves electricity.
The heart of the building is the concert hall.
Its interior design, its attributes, its existing walls, the stone, the building’s contours, and its exterior forms determined the interior design.
In practice, we looked for simple, yet powerful symbols.
The material selection stems from this. We reduced the materials as much as we could, basically, to three, in addition to the existing ones.
And we used these three materials throughout the building design.
It’s this simple: oak, stone, white, black.
This is a two-level jazz club. The ground floor and the basement were opened up.
The first thing we had to do, because the building is two levels on the street side, and the middle supporting wall was totally removed
so that we could design an elegant, large space --
we had to create an interior reinforced concrete core, with reinforced, ribbed slabs.
Since the basement and the ground floor levels were given, the headroom in the basement was very low.
We put the stage on the basement level so that it could be seen from the courtyard balcony running along the perimeter.
This balcony is a reinforced concrete slab and would have had to have supports from underneath,
which would have hindered the view of the stage for those sitting on the same level as the stage.
So, instead, we attached the upper balcony to the ceiling above it.
It’s not one of ArchiCAD’s main features, but it is a practical feature: we can automatically generate door and window schedules, and door lists.
This includes not just the size of the door but the type of wall that the door is built into, how many there are, which direction they open, etc.
Given the fact that this is such an old building, there were many different sizes of door openings that had to be synchronized with the existing walls.
Due to the acoustic requirements of the hall, there were many different types of doors needed:
acoustic doors, fire doors, single and double doors, which changed a lot.
So, we made good use of the fact that every time there was a change we could update our lists automatically,
and we could always provide the suppliers with an updated list, quickly and accurately.
The software alone is not a replacement for discipline.
In a project like this, discipline is required regardless of the software, in the same way that it was in the old days with paper drawings.
At the same time, Teamwork takes a huge burden off our shoulders.
Teamwork makes it possible for an entire group, including the architects and the other professions, to work together in real-time.
Technical changes, organizational changes, changes due to finances –
in short, there are scores of ongoing changes that result in a design never actually being ‘final’.
ArchiCAD is able to follow this constantly changing core design.
During the period following the regime change, those institutions that were responsible for spreading
Hungarian music abroad simply crumbled.
Then, almost as a hobby, we launched as a music information center.
I rented an office.
My teacher’s salary was used to hire an employee,
and I lived off of the money I earned as a musician.
In the next 3, 4, 5 years, we will develop this institute into a place that
it will be fashionable to come to
in the same way that people say, ‘I went to Carnegie Hall’
or ‘I went to Covent Garden’.
This business model forced us, on the one hand,
to ensure that everything will remain the same in the future and as a result, of course,
I have left this entire institute to the world.
This means that this institute cannot be sold,
cannot be re-built, and the mission cannot be changed in any way.
This wasn’t my idea.
Scores of American universities work the same way.
Carnegie Hall works this way, too, in that you can’t do anything with it.
It’s there, with its three stories, among the many skyscrapers,
and there it will stay like an unmovable boulder as the center of American music.