In Hungary’s architectural scene, the name Miklós Marosi stands for versatility and individuality. His oeuvre spans the widest range of architectural genres, though his nearly half-century-long career at KÖZTI architectural firm was devoted primarily to the design of public buildings. His distinctive works in contemporary hospital architecture and hotel design, his creative flexibility in adapting to both place and function, and his refined yet inventive approach make him one of the most individual voices in Hungarian architecture. As an educator, member of diploma juries, and an active participant in the country’s professional life, his quiet yet evident influence has shaped the values of several generations of architects.
Alongside his design work, Marosi has been engaged in architectural education since 1975, later serving on design councils, within committees of the Chamber of Hungarian Architects, on the editorial board of Magyar Építőművészet, in the presidential body of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, and in various professional associations. His creative attitude and personal character embody a cultivated civic mindset open to new ideas – one that unites humanistic literacy with visual sensitivity, social responsibility, and a deep openness toward the environment. He was never a revolutionary innovator, yet a review of his completed projects over the decades reveals, beyond the visual character of each era, a consistent and guiding ambition: to give architectural form to his belief in the harmonious relationship between people and their surroundings.
Designing hospitals and hotels requires balancing numerous practical considerations – creating complex systems of spaces, functions, and interrelated units that can satisfy a wide array of needs. In the case of hospitals, the immense cost of large-scale projects compels the architect to think decades ahead, even up to fifty years, anticipating needs that may only emerge later. Foresight, the precise coordination of details, and functional clarity are essential features of Marosi’s work. Yet his buildings also stand out for their sculptural form and expressive design.
Among his most significant mentors were Miklós Hofer, György Jánossy, and Lajos Zalaváry – three true architectural personalities. Marosi joined KÖZTI in 1970, first as a junior designer, later as studio head, head of the architectural department, and eventually as the firm’s chief architect. Since 1996, he has served as chairman of the board of directors. For many, KÖZTI represented both a workplace and a learning community – an environment of inspiration and shared thinking. Marosi was very much part of this ethos, and his work remains characterized by collaboration and collective creativity.
He is the architect behind numerous Hungarian hospitals – designing new extensions for several institutions over the decades – as well as urban hotels, heritage restorations, and office buildings, including the Budapest headquarters of the Wienerberger (1998) brick producer and KÖZTI’s own office building (1993), shared with the Artisjus copyright agency. He also designed the Kodály Museum (1988) and the Újbuda Shopping Centre (1998). His wide-ranging career, marked by rational precision and a subtle poetic quality, is best appreciated through a chronological exploration of his most significant works.
County Hospital, Kecskemét (1980–1983)
The commission for the Kecskemét County Hospital, won through a design competition, was Marosi’s first truly significant project. By the early 1970s, the county hospital –operating since 1926 and continuously expanded – had entirely outgrown its existing site, leaving no room for further extension. A new large-scale complex was therefore planned on an undeveloped plot in the western part of the city, and the competition was won by KÖZTI with Marosi’s design. The first phase, completed at the end of 1980, brought comprehensive modernization with new operating rooms and specialized departments. The two-storey block housed diagnostic and therapeutic units and a service section, as well as a county outpatient institute, a regional oncoradiology center, and an ambulance station. Design was complicated by the county council’s requirement that the building be constructed using prefabricated panels from the local Kecskemét housing-factory system. Marosi, however, successfully adapted the technology to hospital-scale needs by commissioning a unique façade panel design. The result was a rhythmically composed frontage alternating between two panel types. He also designed an attractively landscaped garden to serve as a resting park for long-term patients and visitors.
New Clinical Block of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged (1989–1993)
The 410-bed clinical block was built as part of the modernization program of the University of Szeged’s Faculty of Medicine. In 2007, based on Marosi’s plans, a new emergency department was added on the ground floor, connected to the main entrance by a steel-and-glass canopy. The heart of the hospital is a multilevel atrium from which students can access the large lecture hall. The specialized design knowledge Marosi gained in Kecskemét was applied here in a way that harmonized with the site and the academic environment.
New Surgical Block of the Uzsoki Street Hospital, Budapest (2000–2001)
The hospital complex is centred around the former Jewish Girls’ Orphanage, a late-19th-century building now under historic protection and later converted into a hospital. The new block designed by Marosi is in full harmony with the old Art Nouveau main building. The extension introduced spacious entrance halls within the new wings while maintaining the scale of the original complex. Beyond the addition of new wards and diagnostic units, the reconstruction modernized the entire medical, transport, infrastructural, and information systems. At the same time, through the use of traditional, durable materials, transparent spatial organization, and balanced proportions, the complex retained its character as an integral part of Zugló’s garden-city fabric.
Corinthia Grand Hotel Royal, Budapest (2002)
When it opened in 1896, the Royal Hotel was the largest and most modern establishment in Central Europe, built for the guests of the Millennium Exhibition. It boasted a grand ballroom, two courtyards, impressive suites of halls, world-class rooms, and first-rate amenities. Most of the building was destroyed in 1945, and the remaining parts burned down in 1956. Marosi’s reconstruction design was realized after winning a two-stage international competition, reviving the original 1896 concept with 376 rooms, 39 luxury suites, multiple conference halls, and restaurants.
The reconstruction restored the richly decorated façade on the Nagykörút (Grand Boulevard) to its original splendour, and the floor plan followed the 1896 layout. The standard guest rooms on the outer wings were upgraded, while the new Hársfa Street wing, organized along a central corridor, added a large number of new rooms. The spatial composition returned to the original cour d'honneur configuration. The atrium and roof level were covered with glass, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior through natural light. The ground floor now functions as an urban passage, open not only to hotel guests but also to passersby, with cafés and shops integrated into the space. Inside, however, the hotel remains shielded from the bustle of the boulevard, and the elegantly composed interiors fuse the refined style of the fin de siècle with contemporary sophistication.
Malomtó Hotel Project, Budapest (2005)
The design for the Malomtó Spa Hotel, envisioned on the site of the former People’s Bath (Népfürdő) in Frankel Leó Street, was preceded by extensive research. Beneath the site lies the Molnár János Cave, a unique hydrothermal cave system in Central Europe still under exploration. Formed by the mixing of karst water flowing from the Buda Hills and thermal water from the Pest side along fractures in Eocene carbonate rocks, the cave feeds the Malomtó (Mill Pond) through its Boltív and Alagút springs, with water piped to the nearby Lukács Baths.
The original late-19th-century public steam bath, designed by Rezső Ray in a romantic, Turkish-bath style, featured a domed reinforced-concrete pavilion completed in 1895, most of which was demolished in the 1970s except for the dome. Marosi’s design for the new hotel preserved the footprint and height of the original structure, reintroducing the dome and expanding the building to include thirteen guest rooms and three apartments for a three-star spa hotel, complemented with new balneological facilities and modern mechanical systems. The three-storey structure, adjoining a neoclassical party wall on its western side and bounded by the József Hill retaining wall to the north, would have revived the original yellow-red polychrome brick façade of the “Turkish Bath” section, with red brick cladding on the remaining walls. The project is unrealized to date. Hopefully a future city council will recognise its values and decides for the architectural and geological restoration of this site of exceptional urban and cultural significance.
Royal Spa, Budapest (2006)
Located in the basement of the Corinthia Grand Hotel Royal, the Royal Spa was reconstructed in 2006 – also to Marosi’s design – decades after the once-celebrated facility had fallen into disuse and decay. Originally built a decade before the hotel itself, the bath was richly decorated with Zsolnay ceramic tiles and stained-glass skylights by Miksa Róth.
The reconstruction sought both to evoke the historical atmosphere and to create a modern spa with contemporary equipment. Marosi restored the original columned structure and materials, reintroduced the inset ceramic wall patterns, stained glass, and wrought-iron detailing. The contemporary sensibility appears in the glass walls around the pool hall, transforming the formerly subterranean space into a bright, transparent interior, further enhanced by the decorative glass skylight above the main pool. In the adjoining rooms, natural stone mosaics and sandstone surfaces contrast delicately with dark walnut furnishings. The harmony of natural materials and historical character lends the spa its unique visual identity.
Soho Hotel, Budapest (2008)
In the narrow plot on Dohány Street, occupying barely nine meters of street frontage, Miklós Marosi gave architectural expression to the hotel’s apt name – how to turn the old Jewish Quarter of Pest into the new Soho. The small, quiet, elegant yet relaxed and slightly retro-style boutique hotel has sixty-eight rooms and six top-floor suites, creating a homely atmosphere right in the heart of the urban jungle.
Marosi not only turned the constraints of the plot to his advantage but also offered a model for the renewal of the district’s decaying buildings. Interior architect Gábor Schinagl continued this concept inside with confident stylistic precision. The narrow façade is defined on the ground floor by a full-height glass door imitating a shop window, above which one of the city’s narrowest houses rises seven storeys high. The floors follow the horizontal divisions of the neighbouring buildings; pairs of well-proportioned windows punctuate the dark brick façade, and a few subtly projecting brick courses provide a barely perceptible vertical rhythm.
Behind the calm exterior lies a lively spatial sequence. Opposite the reception desk, colourful surfaces unfold, interweaving the lounge, circulation area, and bar in contrasting zones. The curved floor pattern and the snaking neon ceiling lights guide the eye and movement toward the restaurant. There are no partitions – the kitchen counter and dining tables stand at the end of the winding path behind the bar. Beyond another glass wall lies a small courtyard garden with tables in summer – a genuine Pest inner courtyard, framed on the sides by the neighboring buildings’ gallery façades and at the back by a fire wall. Sunlight streams in through the divided skylight above the bar, while in the evening the neighboring houses’ open corridors look down into the hotel’s communal spaces.
The rooms are compact, yet the glass walls of the bathrooms and the smartly cut corners create a surprising sense of spaciousness. The longitudinal corridor connecting the two wings forms an external gallery on each floor – a typical Pest gangway – allowing passage from one tower to the other.
Fresenius Nephrology Centre, Budapest (2010)
The Fresenius Kidney Centre, built beside Budapest’s Péterfy Hospital, replaced a dilapidated residential building. Its exterior presents a solid, classically elegant composition: the deep red brick façade evokes the calm dignity of 19th-century historicism, while its clear lines reflect the ideals of classical modernism. On the Rottenbiller Street side, the original lanterns atop the columned gateway – the former entrance to the plot – were restored, preserving the street’s historic character.
From a more oblique view, however, the building’s mass culminates in a bold prow-like corner tower that aligns with the cornice height of the neighboring structure. The uppermost level continues as a technical floor, with the crowning cornice set slightly lower above the top row of windows. The façade rhythm undulates subtly, the interplay between recessed windows and planar projections animated by the vibrant texture of the brick surface.
The seemingly balanced volume offers a different sight from the entrance side. The floor plan is composed of a sharply pointed triangle interlocked with a square – a clever solution for a plot tightly wedged between the hospital and a blank fire wall. With this geometric idea, the building becomes both receptive and assertive, strikingly visible yet contextually integrated. Its enclosure protects the patients treated within, while its openness expresses dignity and dialogue toward the city and the neighbouring hospital.
The upper floors were organized according to strict medical requirements, primarily dictated by sterility – defining the paths for patients, staff, and equipment. Inside, the warm red tones of the brick give way to yellows, sandy hues, natural wood finishes, and terracotta. The upper levels accommodate dialysis units, day wards, a clinical research centre, and two operating rooms equipped with cutting-edge technology. Despite the high-tech environment and rigorous order, patients are never reduced to anonymous elements in an automated process – natural materials, earthy colours, and large windows ensure a continuous connection with the pleasant, garden-lined urban surroundings.
Royal Park Hotel, Budapest (2011)
The Royal Park Hotel, facing Budapest’s Keleti Railway Station, translates the character of the surrounding eclectic residential buildings into the idiom of contemporary architecture through its sensitively designed brick façade. On the narrow plot with a small footprint and limited street frontage, an L-shaped configuration proved to be the most logical solution, creating a small, intimate courtyard and offering opportunities for the clever use of confined spaces. The hotel rooms are optically enlarged by glass-walled bathrooms; in the lobby, the low reception desk resembles an elegant piece of salon furniture, while the restaurant overlooking the inner courtyard radiates a homely atmosphere. Marosi carried forward the lessons learned from the Soho boutique hotel, adapting them thoughtfully to the specific context of this site.
Medical Centre, Kecskemét (2014)
Under Marosi’s guidance, the Kecskemét County Hospital has been continuously expanding for more than 35 years. Following the construction of the first hospital building on the Nyíri Street site in 1980, the complex has grown in several major phases to include the county’s ambulance headquarters, administrative and logistics buildings, warehouses, garages, a new specialist clinic, dialysis unit, oncology centre, and dermatology and venereal disease departments. Functions have been gradually transferred from the severely deteriorated former Soviet barracks of the Izsák Street hospital to this park-like setting.
In the new medical complex, Marosi continued the site-planning logic he developed early in his career. He combined the two principal European hospital types – the single-block system and the looser pavilion arrangement – into a sequence of interconnected buildings linked by enclosed, heated corridors. This concept was carried forward in the 1990s expansions and again in the most recent addition completed in 2016. The new four-storey block, directly connected to the main building yet with its own entrance, extends in a T-shaped plan into the hospital’s surrounding park. Visitors are welcomed in a spacious lobby reminiscent of civic architecture, centred around a large circular information desk over which narrow LED light strips trace its shape in a continuous glow.
Eiffel Műhelyház, Budapest (under construction)
The design of the Eiffel Műhelyház (Eiffel Art Studios) began in 2016 to provide the Hungarian State Opera with a venue for performances and rehearsals during its renovation and, later, to serve as a comprehensive production and workshop centre. Completion of the project is expected in 2018. The scheme adapts the former Northern Railway Main Workshop on Kőbányai Street – a monumental industrial hall closed in 2009 – based on Marosi’s plans.
The protected structure, measuring 214 metres in length and 96 metres in width, is a vast basilica-like brick hall with a steel truss roof and five longitudinal aisles. Over its century-long operation, numerous additions had accumulated. Marosi’s concept returns to the building’s roots – stripping away later accretions, revealing the original architecture, and highlighting its industrial character. Among the preserved elements are the contemporaneous forklift repair shop, the smithy, and the two-storey station building.
The new complex will host the design and production of performances for both the Opera House and the Erkel Theatre. The plans include rehearsal halls, design studios, and production workshops of suitable size and equipment, along with ample storage areas. From the foyer, an in-house stage connects to a sound studio, staff canteen, kitchen, and lounge. Within the main hall, offices and soloist dressing rooms are arranged, while separate men’s and women’s changing suites occupy the central axis. Large workshops and storage halls fill the central and rear sections, and the upper level houses costume workshops, sewing rooms, rehearsal spaces, and storage under glass roofs with a roof garden above.
Conclusion
Respect for the craft in Miklós Marosi’s oeuvre is evident not only in his meticulous attention to details and connections but equally in the atmosphere of clarity and openness that his architecture conveys. He is a representative of contemporary architecture who thoroughly understands the traits of historical periods, the functionalist spirit of the early 20th century, and the social needs of the present day. His work can be seen as a larger-scale version of social architecture – architectural responses to real situations that have proven to be enduring and humane.
[2017]