Tamás Noll's creative oeuvre is a rare exception in contemporary Hungarian architecture: the houses he designed are not recognisable for their exterior; it is not their appearance that bears the designer's signature, but rather it is the formulation of the relationship between the interior space and the external environment. Consequently, he never adhered to a style or fashion of an era – even though he drew inspiration from them –, but based all his buildings on spatial situation and function. This is why he is difficult to categorise as an artist. Tamás Noll's architecture sheds labels, there is only the result itself: a thought enshrined in a precise spatial system and structure.
The First Impulses
He was born in 1952 in Nagykanizsa. In his family, he had the opportunity to experience the value of work and the advantages of manufactory operation. Both of his great-grandfathers ran workshops; one was a furniture maker, perhaps the origin of the late descendant's practical approach and penchant for rational design.
As a young man, he was attracted to the natural sciences, primarily mathematics and physics, as well as chess. In 1972, he began his studies at the Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology. At that time, architecture in Hungary was becoming synonymous with industrialised construction; prefabricated large-panel residential buildings were springing up one after another from housing factories, while traditional city centres were disappearing. “We felt that life was elsewhere”, Tamás Noll said in his inaugural lecture at the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA), speaking about his university years. [1] His architectural outlook was not formed in lectures or seminars, but at Bercsényi Kollégium (Bercsényi College), where he participated in the work of the university journal Bercsényi 28-30 as an editor and later, from 1972, as editor-in-chief. He steered the journal into new waters: in addition to designs, he published translations of foreign theoretical architectural and art texts. as well as domestic theoretical texts, helping future (and established) architects to look beyond the official architectural policy and beyond the Iron Curtain, and to get to know “real architecture”, where the construction industry and political decision-makers do not dictate how one should think about houses, spaces, and people. During Tamás Noll's editorial period, between 1974 and 1976, only three issues were published, yet it was then that the journal – with the help of many other architecture students, including Alice Schneider, Dezső Ekler, János Golda, András Bor, and Attila Bodnár – grew from a literary college periodical into a professional journal of national importance.
This was a period in which Modernism came under increasing worldwide criticism. Studies were written on the complexity of the city, and on the paths and wrong turns taken in 20th-century architecture. The editors were not looking for new principles, but for experimental ground. They also discovered for themselves the representatives of problem-solving architecture in Hungary, above all Csaba Bodonyi and István Ferencz, who worked in Miskolc. When they received their degrees in 1977, Tamás Noll, János Golda, Zoltán Horváth, László Szántó, László Szőke, and others from the class went to Miskolc to work at ÉSZAKTERV, with the supportive and inspiring presence of the Bodonyi family.
Collective Model
Miskolc was the second-largest city in the country at the time, the bastion of Hungarian industry, and socialist urban construction was proceeding at a tremendous pace. The planning company welcomed young people and was even open to the innovative ideas they brought with them. The young group defined themselves as a creative workshop. They formed the group now known as the Miskolci Műhely (Miskolc Workshop). “It was not a formal organisation, but rather a group of professional friends sharing the same values. The spirit of the group was primarily determined indirectly by Antal Plesz, and directly by the guidelines set by Csaba Bodonyi and István Ferencz. Their ideology was permeated by a disillusionment with modern architecture. Instead of placeless, abstract truths, they put their faith in rational, place-bound, adaptable solutions,” wrote Miklós Sulyok in his study of the Miskolci Műhely (Miskolc Workshop). [2]
The group's operation was unusual in several ways. The Pécs Csoport (Pécs Group), formed around György Csete, already existed in Pécs, but Imre Makovecz's team of young architects with organic principles only came together in 1981, following the first architectural camp in Visegrád. The people of Miskolc were early and unique in their “withdrawal”: they had no leader and were collectivists. Csaba Bodonyi and István Ferencz were only their helpful, supportive mentors, but they made decisions independently. They wanted not only to work together, but also to live collectively. To design their community house, the company launched an architectural competition, which was won by Csaba Bodonyi's design. He was obliged to use factory-built large-panel technology, and he created 14 apartments and a communal studio, as well as other communal spaces. This became the Miskolci Kollektív Ház (Miskolc Collective House). “Bodonyi, well-versed in system design, made the best of a technology that could be called inflexible: he created many small residential units and a large communal space. With the exception of a single reinforced concrete element, the house was built from prefabricated factory elements: the only unique element was the roofing of the large communal space, but that too was made with prefabricated custom beams and column frames.” [3] It was Tamás Noll's idea to rent it from the Miskolc City Council as an association – the first civil association in the country, the Teampannon Kollektív Lakó Egyesület (Teampannon Collective Living Association), was founded in 1979. Decisions about the house and the house rules were reached through mutual agreement. The Collective House was a national example of how a group of young people could break free from the standards of a given socialist environment and translate their principles into practice at the level of everyday life. [4]
Tamás Noll's career curved upwards quickly. He did design work in Miskolc, and in 1980, he joined the editorial board of the journal Magyar Építőművészet (Hungarian Architecture) for two years. His first buildings were built in these years and immediately attracted a lot of attention. In 1983, he completed the Miskolci Gyermekrehabilitációs Központ (Miskolc Children's Rehabilitation Centre), which was influenced by contemporary Japanese architecture, and for which he was awarded the Ybl Prize at the age of just 31. In 1984, the Tokajbor irodaház (Tokaj Wine Office Building), designed for Sátoraljaújhely, was inaugurated; it was described by architectural historian Ferenc Vámossy as one of the first postmodern buildings in Hungary. Incorporating and mirroring the existing building of the wine combine, Noll created a representative lobby consisting of two masses and a skylight-covered hall connecting them. The latter, in the form of an “interior street”, with a floor level that follows the slight rise of the terrain and a glass roof that descends in the same way, achieved a spectacular perspective distortion by gradually narrowing the space in both plan and section, with side galleries running along the length of the hall. The unadorned block of the Gyermekrehabilitációs Központ (Children's Rehabilitation Centre), which starts from mass formation, and the subtle transition between the office function and the family house environment of the Tokajbor irodaház (Tokaj Wine Office Building) are true feats, carrying forward the best of the teachings of Antal Plesz and Bodonyi. In these same years, Noll completed Cycle VI of the MÉSZ Mesteriskola (Master School of the Association of Hungarian Architects), together with several of his Miskolc colleagues – János Golda, Zoltán Horváth, and Ágnes Novák. Then, in 1987, he was given an exceptional opportunity: to work for two years in a major American design firm.
Overseas Experiences
The Hungarian-American architectural exchange programme was initiated by Ferenc Callmeyer and László Papp, who lived in the United States, through an agreement between the Magyar Építőművészek Szövetsége (MÉSZ, Association of Hungarian Architects) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1986, signalling the socialist system's cautious opening towards the West. MÉSZ invited applications from young architects under 35, and the portfolios of five architects selected from the applicants were sent to László Papp, who arranged for two young Hungarian architects to be hired by American architectural design firms for a two-year assignment.In the second year of the programme, Tamás Noll was given the opportunity, together with Tamás Nagy, to join the New York-based architecture firm Emery Roth and Sons. He was able to work with an open-minded, international team designing large-scale buildings. “What did these two years mean to me? In short, it changed my views on architecture, architectural design practice, and life in general in every way. It is a fundamentally different experience, a different perception, to be in an unfamiliar country and to be actively involved in daily life there, working and managing all the hustle and bustle of a family's life. Getting to know a country is a gradual process; first, you get to know the practicalities, then, as time goes by, you become more and more aware of the characteristics and differences of the new environment. What was evident from the start was the positive, cheerful atmosphere that surrounded one at work and in private life. It took a long time before I was able to articulate the real basis of this feeling, which I was finally able to express in terms of respect for each other and taking responsibility.” [5]
The most important part of the experience was the professional operation. During this time, Noll learned that good work requires collaborative thinking, encouragement, a precise regulatory environment, and, above all, continuous improvement. This is what he brought home with him in the summer of 1989, the year of the regime change.
In a New Framework
During the 1989-90 period, Hungary was rapidly redefining itself. The professional conditions underlying architecture were also transformed; the large state design offices were abolished, and smaller, functioning, and marketable creative associations were established. Some members of the Miskolci Műhely (Miskolc Workshop) remained in the city. Tamás Noll first became the office manager of Montavid-Teampannon Rt. in Miskolc for a short time, then in 1991 he came to Budapest, and together with János Golda, Ágnes Thoma, and Lajos Koszorú, they founded M-Teampannon, of which he is still the managing director and lead designer. The choice of name reflects loyalty, which however never overrode the guiding principle he had adopted at the start of his career: creation as part of a team. The “M” and “TEAMPANNON” preserve the memory of their start in Miskolc.
In light of his previous activities and responsible roles, it is not surprising that he has been involved in the professional public life of architects for a long time, starting in 1990, first as the chairman of the joint supervisory board of MÉSZ and the newly established Chamber of Hungarian Architects, then as the vice-president of the Chamber between 1997 and 2009, and as its president from 2009 to 2013. He was able to put his experience in the United States to good use in shaping the conditions to professional practice, but he also saw that it would take several generations to bring about real change: “Unfortunately, the professional environment in Hungary today is not the same as in America; building here has proven to be much more difficult, and the efficiency of the work invested is different. It will take a considerable time for the Hungarian professional community to free itself from the constraints that still prevent normal functioning and the development of a system based on healthy competition.” [6] He not only spoke out in the professional community, but also tried to encourage the launch of design competitions, the regularisation of the situation of the Építészeti Múzeum (Museum of Architecture), the creation of a modern, balanced contract system, etc., in numerous interviews and publications. After the end of his presidential term, he was involved only in the organisation of the Adriai Építész Regatta (Adriatic Architects' Regatta), devoting all his energy to design activity.
Thinking in Structure
The buildings emerging after 1990 showcase Tamás Noll's shapr affinity for problem-analysis, his approach based on the structure of space, and the complex, process-oriented thinking he learned in the American office. The shopping centre and MOM Lakópark (MOM Residential Park) were built behind office towers designed by Antal Puhl and Ákos Dobrányi, were completed in 2000, and won the special prize of the Magyar Ingatlanszövetség (Hungarian Real Estate Association) the following year. This type of building is rare in his oeuvre; Noll never designed a single-family house or a condominium, but a residential building consisting of several blocks only here, on the site of the former MOM factory. M-Teampannon drew up the Master Plan for the entire site. Two aspects were kept in mind: the creation of an urban atmosphere on the site of the defunct factory, and the visual corridors between the residential buildings – echoing the fundamental idea behind the Miskolci Gyermekrehabilitációs Központ (Miskolc Children's Rehabilitation Centre), inspired by traditional Japanese architecture, i.e. creating a balance between saturated and empty spaces. Here, the opening up of the dense urban constructed environment towards the hills played a particularly important role.
The reverse was true in the case of Sapientia Erdélyi Magyar Tudományegyetem (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania) in Târgu Mureș (2005), which had to be located in an apple orchard on the outskirts of the city. Here, the lack of a built environment was a challenge to be overcome. Noll and his fellow designers, Attila Madzin and Rózsa Csavarga, took the model of Mediterranean cities as their starting point: they tried to create a dense urban fabric in the landscape using only few elements. Of the campus plan, the main building was realised with its towered entrance block inspired by the Transylvanian architecture of Károly Kós. The spatial structure was composed in a rhythm of densification and expansion. The library, as a concentrated place of knowledge, gives the ensemble a vertical emphasis, reminding one of the enclosure of Transylvanian fortified churches – the windows also become dense, rod-like openings – while the lobby and the auditorium, as the site of processes, together with the additional functions, form a horizontal axis, while the continuity of the space is not broken.
His next major work, the SOTE Elméleti Orvostudományi Központ (Semmelweis University Basic Medical Science Centre) (2008), was a huge success, both within the profession and in terms of usage, winning the Budapest Architecture Award of Excellence the same year it was handed over, and the Pro Architectura Award in 2010. The complex forms part of a dense, but chaotic urban fabric, and seeks to impose order within it. Its glass-walled façade, with its broken lines, recedes from the street line, creating a small open area in front of it that functions as an urban public space. The layout is strictly functional. Behind the glass wall, a three-storey high lobby is flanked by a row of pillars on both sides. The upper floor opens onto the lobby in a gallery-like form, emphasising openness and gaining natural light from the glass wall. As one progresses, the spaces become gradually more enclosed, according to their use, with the research rooms located in the most protected part. The blocky character is loosened by the complete opening of the main façade with the glass wall and the terraced, stepped internal courtyards formed between the cross-wings. Instead of ornamentation and formal games, beauty is manifested through noble materials: wooden flooring, polished stone cladding articulated with metal strips. The monumental effect comes from the puritan spatial formation itself and the simplicity of the materials, but the spacious views of the surroundings contribute to the effect. The open-work façade surface, the high pillars, the widely projecting cornice, and the blocky character are reminiscent of ancient temples, whilst relying on absolutely modern means.
An extremely precise analysis of space is also apparent in the following works, but it is accompanied by a desire to resolve a strange spiritual-mental state. In 2013, a government decision was made that the research bases of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) had to leave the buildings they had been using for decades in the Buda Castle. They were given a new home along Soroksári út, on the site of the old Ferencváros mill. Tamás Noll and his fellow designers sketched out a “smart” building that could provide calm, balanced research work and a cosy scientific environment in a rust belt undergoing transformation. One reviewer writes of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2016) formulated by the Noll group: “In response to the disjointed world outside, the designers try to draw arrivals into the interior. They start the building with a reception area that is enclosed and set back and a translucent lobby wedged between the two building masses, turning the gaze towards the inner world. The open space, narrowing towards the back, inevitably sucks you in and draws you to itself. The building's high corner formation has a place-marking function – perhaps indicating the power and weight of science.” [7] This also shows that the problem of the university building in Târgu Mureș – the library is a strong vertical corner element here too – offered a certain model, but it is also undoubted that Tamás Noll does not repeat previous ones in any of his works; in the case of the MTA building, he also approached the task, which is complex in both a human and spatial sense, with sensitive situational awareness. The visual corridors, the differentiated interiors, the small gardens, the bridge spanning the space of the lobby, and the dignity and dynamism of the whole complex are combined with a homely feeling, offering free space for both research immersion and socialisation.
On the International Scene
Since the 2010s, Tamás Noll and his firm have been involved in three major projects that have brought global success. As the domestic partner of Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey (ODT) in Dublin, they won an international competition to design the building of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. Completed in 2016, the work creates a permeable, clean, bright chain of spaces from the existing downtown buildings using a new linking element, integrating old and new into a unified structure. The complex, sensitive, and meticulous attention, the thoughtful details, and large-scale spatial experience have created an exceptional building. Its most spectacular part is the oval exposed concrete staircase linking the circulation system of the internal courtyard, which appears as a sculpture in the space.
It was thanks to this commission that in 2015, in preparation for the competition for the Magyar Zene Háza (House of Hungarian Music) in the City Park (Városliget), the Japanese Sou Fujimoto asked M-Teampannon to be their partner in Hungary for the realisation of his own submission. The project was completed in 2022, and has been at the top of the world architectural rankings ever since, receiving accolades one after another. The construction coincided with the pandemic, when Fujimoto was forced to stay away and kept in touch with the Hungarian partner online. Essentially, Tamás Noll and his team (Bence Varga, Norbert Nagy, Rózsa Csavarga, Bence Török) led the modelling necessary for the realisation of the special building, as well as the very complex interdisciplinary cooperation, thanks to which this unique building could be realised to such a high standard.
From 2019, the Teampannon office has been working on the design of the The Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transportation to be built in Kőbánya, as the Hungarian partner of the New York-based architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In 2022, they submitted a joint design with Japan's Kengo Kuma for the competition for the restoration of the Nyugati Railway Station and its surroundings. These rare experiences in the domestic architectural field. Since there is a constant stream of young designers joining Tamás Noll's office, international collaborations are of great importance for them too.
He is currently working on what is perhaps the significant project of his career: the design of Dél-budai Centrumkórház (South Buda Central Hospital). Functional and structural analysis is crucial for this complex, which services a wide range of activities. The separation of the nursing, technology, hotel, and service units is solved via a clear, transparent spatial structure – as the plans testify. The hospital as a whole is organised around the concept of flow, which is also reflected in the external spatial design: the plum-stone shaped building blocks and the unit of the children's hospital forming an amoeba almost float above the two-storey hospital building. The dominant element of the ensemble is natural light, which fills the building complex with the help of interior winter gardens, climatic courtyards, and glass roofs.
The compositional unity of saturated space and emptiness, the spatial structure strictly following function, rationality and sensitivity, unadornedness and dignity – these are the concepts that could be used to summarise Tamás Noll's architecture. We can see a consistent direction from the very first works of his early career to complex, almost district-sized building ensembles, from the intellectual environment of the seventies and eighties to the present day. All of this shows that Tamás Noll's architectural conviction is both solid and flexible, able to provide good answers to the most varied architectural challenges, from small to large, from greenfield investments to dense urban developments. If we are looking for the source of space management, a key concept in Noll's approach, it is worth turning to his master, Csaba Bodonyi, who in his greeting written for the MMA inaugural lecture recalled the period of their beginnings: “...amidst the many constraints, we realised that space, emptiness, has no master, no prescription, price, or politician, but solely the architect's competence and creative freedom, an infinite field of creativity.” [8]
[1] The hierarchical organisation of space...
Delivered in the Pesti Vigadó, 23 June 2022.
[2] Miklós Sulyok: A Miskolci Építész Műhelyről (About the Miskolc Architectural Workshop). In: Tér///Erő. II. Építészeti Nemzeti Szalon (Space///Power. II National Salon of Architecture). Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle), Budapest, 2019, ed. Eszter Götz.
[3] Miklós Sulyok, op. Cit.
[4] For more see: Ádám Pirity: Kollektív (Collective). TDK thesis, BME Faculty of Architecture, 2018, supervisor: Kornélia Kisfazekas.
[5] Magyar-amerikai csereprogram 3. Noll Tamás és Mikó László (Hungarian-American exchange programme 3. Tamás Noll and László Mikó). Építészfórum (Architectural Forum), 23 March 2021.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Anna Szövényi: Leköltözés a Várból (Moving out of the Castle). Magyar Építőművészet (Hungarian Architecture) 2017/2.
[8] Csaba Bodonyi: Noll Tamás akadémiai székfoglalójához (For Tamás Noll's academic inauguration). Delivered in the Pesti Vigadó, 23 June 2022, published: Országépítő.net, 7 July 2022.
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