House and Atelier among the Foothills of Buda / GUBAHÁMORI
Text description provided by the architects. Remeteszőlős is located at the foot of the Buda Hills, north of the village center there are protected forests since 1983, and the village center is also characterized by intensive, multi-level green spaces. Until 1970, the area was a site of agricultural production belonging to the neighboring municipality, which was converted into a recreation area after parceling out in 1972-73.
Until the early 2000s, the settlement was characterized by small, light-construction or brick-built holiday cottages and small service buildings functioning as weekend houses. In the last 20 years, however, there has been a strong change in character, with larger, more complex, and more enclosed detached houses, as part of the suburbanization process in Budapest, beginning to transform the settlement, and with this, the character of the greenery in the town center is losing its former strength.
This house seeks to counteract current building trends and suburban needs in the area: the scale, mass, and materials of the building are more restrained, creating a more intimate relationship with its green surroundings.
The main concept of the mass composition is that the building divides the site into two courtyards of different sizes and characters: a smaller, enclosed courtyard at the entrance and an open rear courtyard for the rooms and living rooms, hidden from the street. A simple formal design, the curved massing, was used to achieve this.
The house has a simple floor plan: the entrance is located in the center of the building where the kitchen and living space are located – a solution that evokes the three-partition layout of traditional Hungarian residential buildings. From the street (where the garage, the storage, and mechanical functions are located), the more intimate spaces (living room, then the bedroom, and the studio, which also functions as a guest room) are located towards the back of the plot.
The owner had already taken care of the garden well before the house was built, and as a result, the basic design intention was fully appreciated when the house was completed: sitting in the living room, the wide windows and the narrow building mass make the viewer feel like they are in between the two courtyards, sitting in the garden.
