public building

Contemporary play with traditional components

On the outskirts of Szob, surrounded by beautiful woodlands in the valley of the Damásdi creek lies Malomkert, the main estate of an ecofarm. Locally produced cheeses and meat products are made from the buffalo and grey cattle raised here, and the local orchards provide fruit for the delicious jams and syrups. The owner envisioned a tourist paradise that would complement the farming activity in this wonderful natural environment. There is a working riding hall on the estate, and they recently turned the former Reithauser chateau into a restaurant and accommodation. Next year two new elements will be added to the estate: small cabins in the woods and a sauna house.

When creating the architectural concept, we found our way back to the traditional hip roof archetype, a familiar and defining shape of the Hungarian countryside. We cut this shape into pieces to get the basic element of the woodland cabin with the floor area of 6 by 6 meters. We could create a number of variations by combining these elements in different ways. The sauna house is also a combination of these elements, only in a larger scale: we put 8 elements together, and rotated each of them by 90 or 180 degrees around their vertical axis. This created a rectangular building with a very exciting roof shape. Inside there will be a pool area, smaller relaxing and treatment rooms, saunas, and on the rooftop there will be a sun deck as well. The shape of the buildings is built from familiar, traditional elements, but they are moved and modified in a way to create an unmistakably contemporary design.

Design: Nóra Pajer, Noémi Soltész / Nanavízió / 2019
Location: Szob, Malomkert
Size: 36 + 288 m2
Exhibition: Young Architects’ Generation, Association of Hungarian Architects, 2020 &
Architectural Model Festival, Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, 2019