Friday 31 August 2012

No Decoration Please, We're Modernists

If Hungarian architecture is known for anything, it is
for decorative tiling and playful rooflines. Looking down from the top of Gellert Hill you can spot lots of examples of the kind of thing I mean:





The fact that these are neighbours to the new house that is under construction there makes it even harder to understand why the designer chose to go for a flat roofed concrete box. If there were no models to be inspired by, I might conceivably understand the choices that have been made but, given that in every direction there are pleasing alternatives to being inspired by a shoe box (if you read Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog you will find a hilarious explanation for another famous Budapest building with a similarly boring shape), the decision to build this is baffling:

I suppose like the famous quote about why one should climb the Eiffel Tower, the owners have taken the attitude that they will be inside their dreary new creation, so they won't have to look at it.

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