General design: Architéma Kft.
Architecture: Rozália Szekeres, Lajos Kuknyó
Interior design: Tibor Somlai
Contributors to architectural design: Zsuzsa Fülöp, Bernadett Babits, László Kara, Gábor Lipták, Ildikó Palásti, Tamás Pető
The building was constructed for the First Military Insurance Institution between 1911 and 1913. In 1938, a cinema replaced the former restaurant and night club. In 2002, the premises were designated as a protected monument.
The greatest challenge of the reconstruction was to harmonize the protected status with the architectonic changes that were required by the new function and affected the organization of spaces. In a theatre, it was no longer necessary to separate incoming and outgoing audiences, and we opened the stairs that lead up from the auditorium. We placed the service rooms and the new large cloakrooms in the second basement floor, in newly created spaces. We added glass display cases along the two longer walls of the foyer to make it symmetrical. (The cubicle of the ticket office was destroyed during the siege of Budapest.)
We sought to use period materials, and restored the black-and-white opal glass, the wooden wallpaper and the chrome-plated metal fittings in the original quality.
Photography: László Lugosi Lugo
