Budapest Liget Hungarian Museum of Architecture and FotoMuzeum

Museums of Light

Our proposal for the Liget Budapest Project creates a unique urban interface and civic cultural space for the city of Budapest. Our Hungarian Museum of Architecture & FotoMuzeum Budapest project is conceived as an integrated urban architecture and landscape intervention that constructs a symbolic gateway for City Park. Acting as a civic generator the proposal negotiates a delicate balance of both local and global reach through its embracing of local heritage and context of the city while creating an innovative and charged cultural center of communication that will offer the local community a shared and public resource while attracting and educating a global audience in the cities rich history of architecture and photography. The museums will serve as spaces of exploration, creating a multifaceted resource for the communication of its rich historical collection and creating a research laboratory for future education, innovation and development. 

Budapest is known throughout Europe as the city of lights. Our proposal reexamines illumination within Budapest through the creation of buildings and landscapes that will participate in the rich illumination fabric of the city as beacons of light. The design of the building explores day and night lighting scenarios in an attempt to create translucent bodies that create an intimate and sensorial driven experience for visitors. During the day the building offers a veil of natural light that creates an atmospheric ambience throughout the spaces of both museums. Further facilitated through light wells that create channels of top lit illumination throughout the building organizing vertical circulation through light wells that allow for way finding in its purest form. At night the building and landscape animates the area and park scape creating a rich environment through elemental features of illuminated landscape/ trees, translucent bodies of the museums and the water features such as the reflections pools that create a reflective dialogue with the monument and the buildings.