Gizella Campus
The Budapest XIV. district Hungária street – Semsey Andor street – Gizella street, the new owner Wing Zrt. announced a design competition in 2021 for the utilization and redesign of the area.
The investor’s vision was to redevelop the entire area for a basically office function as the end result of a nearly 10-year, multi-phase demolition and construction investment process. This originally industrial site was for almost 90 years the site of a telephone factory producing world-class products, of which the building designed by the architects Lauber and Nyíri in 1941 is still a key element. In recent decades, Siemens has owned the site, which covers almost 3.5 hectares. At the same time, the iconic building designed by the Reimholz-Lázár duo (1999) was built along Hungária street. Our plan preserves both buildings and makes them part of a structure that preserves the values of the area in several phases, while developing and renewing it.
The main objective of the plan was to create the largest possible contiguous green space and internal park at the centre of a property of significant size, which would not only provide the benefits of a green visual environment for all parts of the building, but also provide its functional and recreational functions through its direct accessibility. The parts of the buildings surrounding the central park will be located along the edge of the site, along the roads, thus maximising the size of the central park, which is approximately 1.5 hectares in size and accessible from all three surrounding streets. The main entrance to the park and the new Gizella Campus remains in a clear position on the Hungária street, which is marked by a new vertical element that fits into the series of high masses that appear with relative regularity on the boulevard at an urban architectural scale. The car storage has been placed below ground level throughout the entire area.
The first element of the project, an office building in the Gizella street catchment area, has been designed, but implementation has stalled and other options for further incorporation are currently being explored. Here we present our original concept for the site as a whole, as agreed by the developer.