Celldömölk, 2013
General design: Földes és Társai Építésziroda Kft.
Senior architect: László Földes, Ybl Prize laureate architect
Architectural design: Csaba Balogh, Orsolya Tatár-Gönczi
Contributors to architectural design: Ágnes Deigner, Levente Sirokai, Péter Sónicz
Our structure is the entrance and visitors’ centre of the Kemenes Volcano Park. It is situated on the plane before the butte, a conspicuous presence visible from far away, inviting visitors to approach. It helps them to get in the mood for volcanos, the mind-boggling forces of nature. It evokes the element of earth with its materials, which keep interacting with their environment, carry the unforeseeable impressions of construction, the impacts received since then, and which will become inseparably one with the land in the course of what we hope is their long life.
The same materials and spatial forms also reference the industrial past, the human activity that shaped this land in recent times.
The building of the Volcano Park is the volcano itself. Rather than trying to emulate a volcano with its (conical) shape, it reflects the logic of the latter with the building’s interior system of spaces. Moving through the structure, visitors follow the route of the lava flow. Magma gathers in the depths of the earth, and then starts upwards at the appropriate moment. A narrow fissure leads to the surface of the earth, branching every now and then, looking for the way up. It is a mysterious world inside Earth. The moment of arriving at the surface is cathartic: a similar experience awaits those who climb the tower. After descending into the depths of the earth, the tour leads through continuously changing spaces, illusory voids and cave-like closed boxes, until we reach the uppermost storey, and from the lookout point we catch sight of the Ság Hill.
Photography: Tamás Bujnovszky
