“…what is built determines people’s lives for years, for decades. Whether they want it or not. You break into their lives with your buildings; you become part of the everyday existence of many. It is not a book that you can put down if it is boring, not a painting from which you can turn your head if it does not interest you, and not music that you can walk out on when you react to the dissonant elements, or take the record off the player. If you operate with dissonant elements, everyone suffers from it, always, because, as they say, architecture is frozen music. It stays there for a long time; people live in it, go there to study, to work, to have fun, to heal, and to die. For this reason, you often imagine yourself a creator. When things come together, you soar, the pencil flies in your hand, everything seems good. The light cuts through exactly as you imagined, the shadows fall as you expected, the materials are in harmony with one another, and the whole thing works. It is a rapturous feeling – this is what makes life worth living…”
(Report from the battlefield, SZIMA inaugural lecture, 2012)
The highlighted excerpt chosen as the motto is an exact and concise summary: the architecture of György Skardelli unfolds in the spirit of responsibility in its broadest sense. He not only emphasises this most essential element of the architect’s task in his professional credo, but his works immediately reveal this principled commitment. In Skardelli’s case, the idea and the result remain a complex unity, unstrained by any need for explanation. In his buildings, the functional and intellectual strands of the concept that shaped the design can be read almost word for word. The composition of the ground plan, the shaping of volumes, the use of materials, the building’s placement, and the choreography of movement all coalesce in a harmony that seems self-evident, and this is usually made readily perceptible by a single generous gesture. With this gesture he achieves that his buildings, alongside engineering precision, functional clarity, and economical construction, nevertheless appear with poetic force, yet without carrying any self-serving aesthetic layer.
He learned from true masters, and this has defined his entire career. As a recent graduate he joined Közti, where Lajos Zalaváry noticed him almost immediately, and the following years were spent working together on design competitions. Designing for competitions is a kind of professional school where a young architect can learn to harmonise concept and detail with precision, and where he does not have to experience the disappointment of seeing the formative core idea of a building become unrecognisable during execution. It provides the designer with a form of firm commitment without forcing him into unacceptable compromises. He can experience the validity of his concept and the success of his responses to the era and to the situation. A career beginning with the trials of design competitions strengthened Skardelli in the conviction that his architectural attitude was the right one.
By the time he established his own studio within Közti in the early 1990s, he had gained – alongside his masters and through completing the Master School – the designer’s self-confidence and the practical experience required by the profession. Luck also played a part in allowing him to encounter many different tasks and to meet a wide range of client expectations. He found himself in a favourable position in that his first independent designs were commissioned by foreign companies and organisations, which meant he encountered international standards early on, as well as the attitude of foreign clients who set higher expectations. He did not commit himself to any single contemporary stylistic movement. His distinctive architecture always grows out of the task at hand; his buildings are not intended to send a message but to serve, representing human relationships within space. At the same time, his synthetic vision, humanistic education and symbolic sensitivity result in solutions in every building that elevate them beyond the neutral unfolding of function, transforming them into works of art that are both easily comprehensible and emotionally engaging. His dynamic, often boldly sweeping forms, his large-scale site-planning concepts, his commitment to preserving architectural values and maintaining appropriate scale are the fundamental principles detectable in almost all of Skardelli’s works. Moving chronologically through the most important buildings brings us closer to an understanding of his oeuvre.
Kőszeg, SOS Children's Village, 1993 (co-designed by Krisztina Torday)
The design commission for the SOS Children’s Village in Kőszeg was the result of a successful competition. The work of the international foundation that provides secure and loving family environments with foster parents is overseen by a German headquarters. This meant that the attention paid to high-quality details and to child-centred design and operation was far greater than what the reality of the Hungarian construction industry could generally offer in the years following the regime change. Skardelli and his team based their design on the small-town pattern of development, realising its structure on a smaller scale in the arrangement of the houses, their relationship to one another, and the spaces created between them. As a result, the project became not merely a complex of buildings with different functions, but a genuine “village", separated from the town on whose edge it stands, yet still maintaining a connection to it. From the entrance, an elongated space leads to the buildings placed at the centre: here stand the community house, the workshop, the kindergarten, and the homes of the village leader and deputy. This core is embraced in a semicircle by the four-unit clusters of family houses where the foster parents and children live. At the ends of the semicircle lie the recreational areas – the sports field and the castle-like playground – which are shared by the residents of the children’s village and the townspeople.
Thus, the dual experience of safety and connectedness can be read directly from the site plan. The simple, two-storey volumes of the family houses, identical in structure, also follow a small-town model; the upper floor projects above the entrance and is supported by columns, while the quarter-circle windows and the entrance together outline the “face" of each house. The decorative elements of the façades are the “signboards" created by ceramists Márta Nagy and Nánda Stössel, featuring folk-tale motifs that help with identification and orientation. The extended eaves of the shared buildings, the bastion-like corner element, the balcony parapets made of openwork wooden lattice, the arcaded meeting places, and the alternation of round and angular window shapes create a rational yet charming and welcoming environment. This effect is reinforced by the terracotta colour of the tiled roofs, the simple white plastered façades, the green-painted columns, and the natural warmth of the treated wooden elements.
Knorr-Bremse Research and Development Centre, Budapest, 1999
In the office building of the German company manufacturing braking systems, the Hungarian software developers carry out their work. The office section on the ground floor is linked to a three-unit truck bay where product testing takes place. The commission originally concerned the adaptation of an existing design but based on his understanding of the unusually shaped plot and of the activities carried out in the building, György Skardelli proposed an independent concept, which the client accepted.
The design of the building expresses the tension generated in a multi-ton vehicle during breaking. Skardelli elongated the conventional central-corridor office building to the length required by the three truck bays, and through dynamic formal shaping he designed a structure that dominates its otherwise heterogeneously built-up surroundings. The tension of the curved longitudinal façades halts at the obtusely angled end façade, creating a light, almost floating impression.
The glass wall of the main façade and the slender metal mullion pattern evoke the high-tech character of the work performed here, while the brick cladding appearing on the end walls and the fence establishes a link with the surrounding residential fabric. The metal shading structure and the shallow-pitched metal roof cladding give the three-storey office building lightness and individuality. The strongly projecting eaves and perforated lamellae reduce the impact of strong sunlight on the glass surfaces.
The building received the Pro Architectura Award in 2001 and the Pro Architectura Award of Budapest’s 11th District in 2002.
National Theatre competition, 2000
The most exciting – though ultimately unawarded – result of the competition for designing the new National Theatre was György Skardelli’s exceptional theatre proposal. His concept broke radically with the site requirements of the brief, placing the cultural symbol of the nation upon the Danube, the emblematic river of Budapest. He proposed a multi-layered structure covered by a glass shell, situated on an artificial island in the river, with a riverside approach functioning as a communal space.
The glass shell can be walked around from the outside. From the inside, between the mullions, the panorama of the Danube opens up, and the light breaking through the structural ribs projects fascinating patterns into the interior. From the viewing terraces one can simultaneously look outward through the glass shell and inward into the theatre space. The café and the open-air stage were also situated within this intermediate zone. The theatre’s main volume is conceived as a house-within-a-house, set inside a timber-clad block.
The glass-shell structure also offers a unique solution for the building’s energy supply: the controllable glazed envelope reduces energy demand, photovoltaic cells mounted on its exterior generate the necessary electricity, while the water of the Danube provides the thermal energy required for heating and cooling. Skardelli’s theatre design could have become an iconic building – a truly 21st-century national symbol.
Gandhi Public Foundation High School and Gymnasium, Pécs, 2002
Skardelli received the commission for designing the Gandhi Roma Secondary School in Pécs as the winner of the competition announced by the public foundation operating the institution. On the steeply sloping plot situated in a panoramic, single-family residential environment, he placed a strongly articulated school building together with a sports hall. A tree-lined avenue leads to the main entrance, and in front of the gate the road widens into a small square, forming the space for gathering and arrival. The yellow clinker-brick cladding and the green metal roofing integrate the relatively large volumes of the school into the surrounding green zone. Skardelli employed an additive–hierarchical spatial organisation: the loosely interconnected blocks embrace the terraced schoolyard in a broken U-shape. Three identical learning units are each occupied by one year group, with smaller seminar rooms attached to the larger classrooms. The divided glass wall looks out onto the inner gardens and the central courtyard, preventing any sense of enclosure within the interior spaces. The sports hall is accessible via a separate entrance.
The exciting yet orderly interconnection of simple, unarticulated forms and the prominent corner tower draw on the traditional toolkit of school architecture, though applied in a contemporary reinterpretation. The elongated, gallery-like atrium visually links the many interior spatial units with the central courtyard, creating a spatial structure that is articulated yet still easy to survey. A circular stairway leads from the atrium to the administrative wing. With traditional elements but great design freedom, the school realises an environment in which learning is not confined behind closed walls but remains in direct connection with open space, and where, beyond compulsory schoolwork, community events, group activities and personal development can also find room.
2003 Sports Arena and Urban Square, Budapest (co-designers: Péter Pottyondy, László Gáspár, Ferenc Lázár)
The Budapest Sports Hall, inaugurated in 1982 with a seating capacity of 12,500, burned to the ground in the winter of 1999 as the result of a short circuit. The reconstruction programme at first aimed solely at rebuilding but was later significantly expanded to include the flexibility required for hosting not only sporting events but a wide range of other functions, as well as the transformation of the forecourt into a public space. Skardelli’s proposal envisioned an iconic, immediately recognisable building form integrated into a complex urban space – one that would offer a visual experience so memorable that anyone who saw it once would henceforth associate that image with Budapest. The concept is further strengthened by the fact that the site lies beneath a busy air corridor, making the “fifth façade”, the building’s view from above, an important design consideration.
The form of the Aréna hall was inspired by the idea of a river pebble: a continuous, enclosed, irregular, streamlined shape that stands out as a distinctive element in its surroundings. Its exterior is clad in aluminium, uninterrupted by openings from the paving at ground level all the way to the roof. The side entrances open as mouth-like slits along the lower band of the mass, while the louvred rows conceal the recesses required for mechanical systems. Only the glazed main entrance provides a direct connection to the outside world. Behind the interior of the hall lies a horseshoe-shaped auditorium and an expansive arena floor whose internal space can be flexibly adapted to accommodate the widest variety of events and their corresponding audience sizes. Rapid transformation is facilitated by a dual-lane truck access and movable seating rows. Inside the hall, raw and painted concrete surfaces dominate, together with perforated metal-mesh suspended ceiling structures.
The urban space surrounding the Sports Arena lies 6 metres higher than the adjacent road, which makes its impact on the environment even more pronounced. The paved pedestrian surface that receives and directs the arriving crowds – together with the parking areas and delivery traffic beneath it – is directly connected to the metro exit and the bus terminal. The square is articulated by ramps, stairways, narrower walkways and larger green areas, which turn the extensive paved surface into a pleasant urban space. Embedded into its surface are catering and retail units, the Sports Museum, a cooling water feature, lifts and, at the intersection of the two ring roads, the attention-drawing landmark raised in 2008, the so-called Logo Tower. Thanks to the comprehensive concept, the fragmentation that once characterised the area has disappeared, and the entire vast site now forms a coherent visual whole.
The architectural landscape created here by György Skardelli and his fellow designers continues to set an example for Hungarian urban development even now, nearly a decade and a half after the Arena was designed: thinking in terms of unity, integrating complex functions, and viewing the diverse directions, uses and tastes together has resulted not in a diktat, but in a jointly acceptable solution that meets the needs of city users. It is a high-quality compositional whole in which a biomorphic form coexists harmoniously with a large, paved surface, with the connection to a busy transport hub and with the informality required of an urban meeting place. In 2003 the complex received the Budapest Architectural Award of Excellence.
Reception Building of the Benedictine Archabbey, Pannonhalma, 2004 (co-designer: Ferenc Lázár)
Since the early 2000s, the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma has been redefining its role in the 21st century through the tools of contemporary architecture. One step in this deliberate transformation was the construction of the reception building and the creation of the forest path leading from there toward the abbey. The continuously increasing tourist traffic made the building necessary, and Közti was commissioned to design it. The plan by György Skardelli and Ferenc Lázár linked the symbolism of the road and of searching with the practical tasks of serving visitors.
The reception building is a monolithic block whose unarticulated mass and raw concrete surface are broken only by a few strict, narrow glass bands. On the longitudinal façade, the glass strips intersect in two lines forming a cross; on the shorter façades, glass bands that open up the stairwell spaces dominate. Entering the ground floor, visitors are received in semi-darkness; here the ticket office and information desk are located. On the second level a book and devotional shop was created, while the third floor houses a lecture hall equipped with a projector, from which a bridge with a glass balustrade extends out toward the hillside and continues as a forest footpath edged with gently broken lines, leading to the abbey’s main building. The path is thus divided into several stations, accompanied by the gradual strengthening of light. As one moves upward inside the reception building, the outside light enters the interior more and more strongly, and on the third level, reaching the horizontal glass band, the cross shape becomes visible from within as well. This is the building’s only ornament, yet together with the external light it carries strong transcendental meaning. The unarticulated shaping and monolithic mass evoke ancient structures, while the contemporary materials – concrete and glass – and the refined proportions of the slender bridge and the cross shape are rooted in the present. In the language of architecture, this building speaks about the foundations of the Catholic faith: unshakeable belief, the close relationship between nature and religion, and, in this firm assertion expressed through a subtly composed architectural vocabulary, it designates the place of the 21st-century human being.
Innovation Centre, Sopron, 2005
The “face” of the Industrial Park established near Sopron is the Innovation Centre, completed in 2005. It consists of a long, elongated three-storey block and two wings perpendicular to it. The longitudinal Passage Building leads the arriving visitor toward the industrial park, which is functionally justified as well, since all the offices, bank premises, workshops and technical centres serving the park operate here. The glass façade divided by metal ribs, the flat roof with its broadly projecting eaves, and the slender columns supporting the corners carry the harmonious purity of classical modern architecture. It is an elegant building of refined proportions; its clean use of materials and transparent glass wall make it a pleasant reception facility. Inside, the offices, workshops and service rooms are approached from a corridor arranged with galleries on two levels.
In the transverse wing reaching back toward the park, also three storeys high, there are offices and mechanical units. The third wing is two storeys tall with an oval floor plan; here the ground floor is occupied by a restaurant and kitchen, while the upper level contains meeting rooms and lecture rooms. This is the more protected, intimate part of the building, made visibly so by the oval form. On the façade of this wing, a row of wooden lamellas also appears, whereas in the Passage Building and the transverse wing this material is used only for interior shading devices. The composition associates classical architectural quality with the functions serving industrial activity, thereby lending dignity to the work carried out there. Its openness and the natural light entering every part of the building create brightness, while the adjustable lamellas ensure a pleasant working environment. The spirit of the Innovation Centre reflects a larger-scale, environmentally more complex version of the approach seen in the Knorr-Bremse Office Building of a few years earlier. In 2005 the building received the Winkler Oszkár Plaque, the architectural award of the city of Sopron.
Kálvin Square surface arrangement, metro station, Budapest, 2012
As part of the construction of Metro Line 4, the surface redevelopment of Kálvin Square was carried out. The car traffic dominating Kálvin Square had pushed pedestrian movement into underpasses and narrow pavements, even though the bustling university life of the area, the Palace District, and the growing tourist activity of nearby Ráday Street increasingly demanded the existence of freer urban spaces. Skardelli’s plan initiated a new pedestrian axis connecting Mikszáth Street and Kálvin Square, with distinctive paving, cafés and restaurants opening onto the square, benches, low seating walls, planted green islands, planter boxes, and characterful lampposts. Above the metro exit, a generously formed steel-and-glass canopy was installed, its materiality harmonising with the bank and office buildings on the two sides of the square, while its organic form softens their strict geometry. The irregularly shaped green areas planted along the boulevard separate the square from car traffic, and the groups of trees improve the summertime climate, which is otherwise barely tolerable due to the extensive glass façades.
The complete exclusion of vehicle traffic from the beginning of Baross Street resulted in an urban space of exceptional quality, well used and attractive at every time of day. A distinctive feature of the square’s character is that in a relatively small area, many different catering establishments can operate in close proximity to one another in such a way that each forms a distinct part of the square, yet enough free space remains for people to meet. The Lord Rothermere memorial placed at the mouth of Baross Street was also freed from the marginal position caused by its former proximity to a petrol station, and visually connected to the ornate gate of the Wenckheim Palace.
Puskás Ferenc Stadium, Budapest, concept, building permit and construction design, 2013-2015
The Népstadion, completed in 1953, was one of the most modern facilities of its time. In 2002, one of the greatest and internationally renowned figures of Hungarian sport was honoured when it was renamed Puskás Ferenc Stadion. Over six decades, the sports facility was subjected to heavy use and fell into very poor physical condition; the upper spectator sectors had to be closed. In 2013, a government decree was issued concerning the future of the stadium, defining its development along the concept of a “stadium within the stadium”. According to this concept, a contemporary 21st-century stadium would be built while retaining and integrally incorporating the architecturally and urban-design-wise valuable character elements of the 60-year-old building – the stair pylons and the tower building.
The commission was given to Közti, the legal successor of the company that designed the original plans, with György Skardelli leading the design. The retained elements receive new functions in the transformation. In the tower building, a museum presenting one hundred years of Hungarian football history will be created; the 18 stair towers will be used to fill the new stands with spectators; and the original stands – not only outdated but functionally obsolete – will be demolished and replaced with new seating structures. The preserved old elements and the new volumes are tightly integrated, thus creating architectural continuity. The handover of the stadium is planned for 2019, and by autumn 2016 the parts of the building deemed without value had been demolished.
2012-2016 Lower Castle and Visitor Centre, Füzér (co-designed by Bálint Kelemen)
The Árpád-era structure of Füzér Castle was expanded by the Perényi family during the 15th and 16th centuries, then it was set on fire in 1676. Its restoration has been underway since 1992. The Upper Castle was designed by Mihály Rudolf, while the reconstruction of the Lower Castle together with the new visitor centre was designed by György Skardelli and Bálint Kelemen. The task was, on the one hand, to create a physical and architectural link between the lower and upper parts of the hill, and on the other hand to evoke a castle section for which no visual depiction has survived. Thus the entire Lower Castle has become a work of contemporary architecture that, through its materials and forms, conveys the character of medieval castle-building. The rubble stone walls, the columned wooden supports, the roof’s grey slate covering, and the pronounced timber structure together produce an effect that is puritanical and massive yet still light, thanks to the mullioned glass façade and the steeply pitched mono-gable roof. Beyond serving tourist functions, the visitor centre also became a venue for events. The suspension bridge and the castle gate leading to the Lower Castle continue the visitor centre’s material palette in the form of rubble stone, timber cladding, wooden railings and a riveted wooden gate. The few decorative elements of the Lower Castle – including a metal door handle with a griffin head, whose motif derives from a tile stove fragment found during research, and the sun–moon symbol atop the gate tower – draw on imagery from medieval Hungarian belief systems.
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Summarising Skardelli’s architecture, we encounter the fundamental dilemmas of the 21st century: in each of his works he resolves the tensions between community and space, human being and faith, technology and art, natural and architectural environment – with dynamic forms executed in a highly disciplined, material- and volume-efficient manner. Despite his striking gestures he does not create architecture of spectacle, but rather a spatial art that responds to society’s needs while observing the prudent use of resources, remaining at once rational and serene.
[2016]