In Hungarian architecture, the generation that graduated in the mid-1970s embarked on their professional careers with considerable opportunities, yet their hopes were shadowed by uncertainty. Their opportunity lay in their masters, who passed on craft knowledge and a commitment to quality; the obstacle to their ambitions, however, was the state of Hungarian architecture itself, in which politics compelled designers towards mediocrity and mass production.
As a newly qualified architect, Gábor Turányi joined the design firm Lakóterv in the studio of Károly Jurcsik. A quarter of a century later, Turányi recalled that period as follows: “The Jurcsik studio was an island in the sea of design offices and panels. Not a gently rocking skiff, yet still a sheltered place. Sheltered enough for the young man working there to form (and retain) the belief that architecture is a decent profession, with decent people […] the spirit of modest architecture hovered there… Instead of spectacular principles, craftsmanship had honour.” (MÉ, 1998/4.)
From Lakóterv, he moved, at the invitation of Jenő Rimanóczy, to ÁÉTV, joining a circle of talented young architects seeking new paths, including Ferenc Cságoly, Gábor U. Nagy, and Tamás Tomay. Looking back over the architectural landscape of the past twenty-five years, these names reappear in prominent places: each became a singular, highly distinctive figure in contemporary Hungarian architecture, influential as teachers and, through their impact, founders of a school in their own right.
It was this ‘school’ that formed Turányi’s outlook and whose legacy he carried throughout his career. To it he added an ability rare among Hungarian architects: a particularly sensitive capacity for place-making. Relying on this knowledge, he is able, beyond spaces tightly bound to a programme, to create semi-enclosed, semi-open intermediate areas not tied to a precise function, responding to environmental signals while fulfilling the scarcely articulated needs of a building’s users; it is these spaces that lend his buildings dignity. They offer freedom and fulfilment in a humane, psychological dimension that lies outside architecture in the narrow sense, yet whose presence or absence depends greatly on the designer’s intuition.
Turányi shapes space and function, possibilities and demands, through precise analysis and an equal attentiveness to every element. His poetic sensitivity assists him here – discreetly concealed behind raw materiality and an additive approach to massing that avoids showy forms, yet emerging under closer scrutiny in the harmony of materials, structures, surfaces, colours and textures. The way mass and materiality answer one another from building to building, the way surfaces meet, the way rooms align or intersect – all this suggests an overseeing intelligence, an almost philosophical knowledge of the complex reciprocity between space and the human being.
Yet despite these qualities, the most important characteristic of his architecture, in my view, does not lie primarily in his capacity for place-making, nor in the system by which part and whole are matched at every point. Rather, it lies in communication. Gábor Turányi is an architect of dialogue. Every building of his – and every space created within, between, or by those buildings – documents an encounter in the language of architecture. The Forest School in Visegrád, the Forestry Information Centre in the Pilis, and the family houses designed for the Buda Hills all speak of the inner relationship between landscape and human being. They do not simply frame views from within – Turányi’s buildings do not turn towards nature with huge sheets of glazing – but respond to the inner dynamics of that relationship, using the finest, almost imperceptible gestures of withdrawal, watchfulness, inwardness and opening. From his buildings, we read the dialogue between the city and its inhabitants, the settlement and history, industry and tradition – always by giving voice to the spirit of the specific place, the genius loci. To achieve this, he typically employs not expressive, spectacular forms, but the ancient, basic elements of architecture: wall, roof, opening, slope, gable, plinth, chimney, and porch; these are the fundamental words of Turányi’s architectural vocabulary. This remains true whether he communicates through a coloured glass façade in a dense urban setting or brings the roof slope of a sports complex down almost to the ground.
He is exceptionally consistent in his use of these building blocks, yet he rarely repeats himself. Distinct phases can nevertheless be discerned: a period of raw brick façades and the central role of exposed rubble-stone–brick–timber materiality; later, a simplification of the underlying idea of additive composition; then, for a brief interval, a phase of symbolic form-making; and from the mid-2000s, a loosening of earlier strictness, a more lively responsiveness to elements of the surroundings and to new possibilities in building technology. Even so, his basic design attitude does not change. His spatial language is varied and flexible, often playful as well as strict. Sometimes we discover more humour, sometimes a more poetic inspiration; at times an introverted stance, at others a more openly articulated one. Yet from his first independent commission onward, Turányi has consistently shaped, in built form, the possibility of dialogue – the intense communication between human beings and the environment.
In Turányi’s case, however, the oeuvre cannot be described without acknowledging his role as a teacher. Alongside practice in the strict sense – the work of design – his contribution to architectural education has been significant from the outset, essentially from the years immediately following graduation. It is through close collaboration with students that one can understand the remarkable flexibility, diversity and openness to renewal that run through his design work. From this also stems his habit of involving his most talented pupils in particular commissions. In 2004, he opened a joint practice with his son, the architect Bence Turányi (who graduated in 2001); from that point, their design approaches have been interwoven in the projects.
Let us trace the key milestones of this professional trajectory through a selection of key works.
Educational and recreational building, Badacsonytomaj, 1982–1983; co-designer: Zoltánné Gulyás
Turányi’s first independent work, the holiday complex in Badacsonytomaj, immediately attracted attention – so much so that the year after its completion, the architect received the Ybl Prize. Designed as a lakeside resort for the Workers’ Militia, it stood out in Hungarian architecture of the period for its use of vernacular elements, then still rare; yet postmodern, socialist-realist and organic tendencies are all present in it, and nonetheless it became an autonomous, characterful and – above all – coherent whole that carries forward local traditions. In forming the new block, Turányi attached the industrial buildings already standing on the plot, creating a pentagonal perimeter arrangement with them. Together with Katalin Somogyi-Soma, they repeated – with delicate irony – the five-pointed star form in the design of the wellhouse at the centre of the courtyard – all this in the final decade of socialism, already in the hope of a near-future ‘civil’ use.
With its white-rendered façades, red clay-tiled gable roofs, and emphatic timber carpentry, the building responds to the vernacular architecture of the Balaton Uplands. Yet the extensive glazing and rhythmic divisions in the white walls signal modernism, while the castle-like ring arrangement and several details – evoking historical allusion – align with postmodern taste. Contemporary criticism identified this building, among others, as part of the emergence of a ‘new sensibility’ in Hungary.
Design for the Hungarian Pavilion at Expo ’96, 1994; co-designers: Győző Bujdosó, István Simon, and Gábor Zoboki
The cancelled Budapest EXPO brought to the fore serious energies and stimulating ideas in Hungarian architecture in the years after the political transition. As the winner of the pavilion competition, Turányi also conceived a new building block for an Architecture Faculty for the post-exhibition period. The jury’s decision, too, was guided by this dual function. The concept proposed an elliptical domed hall surrounded by five distinctive towers, onto which, after the exhibition closed, further university levels would have been added. The dome would have been clad in coloured Zsolnay ceramics. In this design, Turányi first employed symbolic mass forms.
Classrooms for Újlaki Sarlós Boldogasszony Roman Catholic parish, Budapest, 1985–1987; co-designer: László Vince
This small, modestly funded commission is among Turányi’s most cherished. Its financial basis was the parish offertory. The neighbourhood – a cluster of single-storey houses in a small-town pattern – was losing its former character precisely at the time of construction; along Bécsi Road, a row of stage-set-like houses evoking a false nostalgia was built. Nestled among them, the parish building, with its gabled, porch-fronted mass, brick façade and carpentered gable, offered a far simpler, more archaic route – free of romanticism. All this is set back behind a solid stone boundary wall, which isolates it from the surrounding visual noise while offering calm and identity to those who come here.
Forest School, Visegrád, 1995–1996; co-designer: László Földes
At the Visegrád building, Turányi and Földes realised one of the finest Hungarian examples of Kenneth Frampton’s “critical regionalism”. The valley of the stream running through the forest, a place of particular intensity, amplifies the force of any architectural gesture made here. Turányi’s school does not seek invisibility; its materiality does not melt into the landscape but visibly translates the site’s energies and creative force into architectural language. One of its precedents is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: here, too, horizontal articulation and rigorous massing evoke the workings of natural forces. Its stepped, additive composition follows the terrain’s changes in level; its intricate form exploits spatial conditions to the fullest. The path to the main entrance, turning step by step, and the rubble-stone parapet accompanying it recall archaic constructions. Its rustic materiality, however, avoids historicising: the compact, massive volumes do not attempt to imitate either historical or organic forms. The building simply is what it is – and yet its poetic power is undeniable. It is as if it grows from the landscape, rising and separating itself step by step, not denying its context but preserving its own strong identity.
The school is approached via a slender timber bridge, and from the entrance, the mass spreads out in a subtle, fan-like motion. Narrow, open courtyards between rubble-stone walls let light into the blocks set behind them; the roofs, rising, take on the silhouette of the surrounding forest. Perfectly judged proportions, a logical ordering, and a restrained appearance counterbalance the façade’s strong material presence; in the rubble-stone texture, sober contemporary details take the form of metal ventilation lamellae.
National Forestry Information Centre, 1998; co-designer: Gabriella Klemm
The client of the Visegrád Forest School, the Forestry of the Pilisi Parkerdő Rt., announced a competition for a forestry information centre. Turányi’s winning entry again leads to the entrance via a timber bridge akin to that at the school – though here the bridge spans not a stream but the plot’s steep slope, and its balustrade’s timber elements form a fine rhythmic geometry. At the end of the bridge, the entrance opens as a fissure into a massive, tall rubble-stone volume. The building comprises three distinct functions, and the masses follow them precisely. The entrance hall, the institution’s long-standing specialist library, the conference room, offices and guest rooms align logically along the building’s axis. Puritan materiality is dominated by rubble stone and raw concrete; as the only decorative elements, delicate timber lamellae articulate the surfaces in a subtle rhythm. The overall composition is sober yet elevated, with perfect proportions and refined detailing.
Porcelanium, Herend, 1997–1998; co-designers: Erika Ignácz, László Kalmár, Gabriella Klemm, and István Simon
Porcelanium was built for the country’s oldest continuously operating company, the Herend manufactory, founded in 1826. This world-renowned hungarikum stands today on the edge of a small settlement, without an urban context. The guiding idea of Turányi’s competition-winning design was to create an urban square opposite the factory block by placing the new buildings, thereby strengthening not only the settlement’s structure but also its identity.
The U-shaped grouping of the buildings – housing the visitor manufactory, restaurant, café and showroom – together with the arcaded ground-floor façade facing the factory’s main entrance create a Mediterranean-inflected urban space. Three wings enclose it, each with an autonomous function and equal status: the technological demonstration, the porcelain shop, and the restaurant–café. They are linked by the covered ambulatory running in front of them and by the symmetrical massing, marked by the silhouette of squat, truncated towers rising at the two ends. A third ‘tower’ enlarges the chimney of the firing kiln into a skyward flue – a symbol of the secrets of porcelain-making.
The building is defined by its dark red brick, whose severity is softened by hand-moulded decorative bricks, ceramic ornaments, corner plinths, glass-brick inserts, and fine timber elements around openings and on doors, creating a geometric rhythm. Here, architecture documents the factory’s past, the memory of the place, respect for craft object-making, and, at the same time, the encounter of tradition with the present.
Vass Collection, Veszprém, 2004; co-designer: László Csutorás
At the entrance to Veszprém Castle, Turányi created a permanent home for the Vass Collection from three dilapidated buildings and the small square opening between them. The collection is the private art holding of László Vass, a master shoemaker and collector–patron, focusing primarily on Constructivism. Turányi did not emphasise the existing buildings’ historic character; instead, with excellent sensitivity, he turned to the subject matter, adapting the interior spaces to the artworks and following modern traditions. Through fine interventions, he unified the three volumes into a single complex with nine exhibition rooms in total and an intimate, domestic courtyard between the buildings. This welcoming character sets the museum apart from the elegant Baroque environment of Veszprém Castle. Alongside the pronounced contrast between historic setting and modern art, the ensemble is defined by well-articulated details, views, and a refined concept of interaction between exterior and interior.
Hotel Novotel Danube, 2006; co-designers: Zoltán Stein and Alfréd Peschka
The original architect of the building near the Buda embankment was Péter Molnár, one of the outstanding figures of modern Hungarian architecture, whose work naturally fused contemporaneity with tradition. In the conversion, Turányi retained the Bem Embankment building’s enduring values and principal character, but stripped away the traces of poor 1960s construction and inferior structural materials. He preserved the building’s size and proportional system; the ribbon–window–and–parapet articulation that sets the façade’s rhythm; the character and colour of the crowning cornice; and tensioned an acoustic secondary glazing in front of the façade plane. With contemporary material choices and by retaining the building’s structural essence, he revived it.
Revitalisation of the Kopaszi Dam, 2007; co-designers: Bence Turányi and Tamás Mórocz
In 2004, a major real-estate development began on the severely degraded riverside leisure zone at the Lágymányos Danube bank, on the Kopaszi Dam. In 2006, Budapest’s District XI Municipality and the site owner announced a national open ideas competition; based on their entry, Turányi’s office received the commission to design fifteen pavilions on the artificial peninsula for hospitality and entertainment. As no specific client briefs were set for individual buildings, the designers proposed multiple ‘dressings’ of a steel-frame structural type, each pavilion with a distinct character. The timber and resin cladding surfaces follow the traditions of ‘shell architecture’, responding to seasonal needs; their temporality and high flexibility are particularly attractive here. Differences between the pavilions manifest in colours, materials and smaller details – formal play – while the structural identity remains legible. Repetition of spatial elements – pergolas, canopies, terraces – and the use of strong colour created an overall image that is unified yet varied: a loose row of pavilions that adapts playfully to the landscape design of the Kopaszi Dam.
Sportmax2 Leisure Centre, 2008; co-designers: Bence Turányi, László Földes, Péter Márk, Levente Skultéti, and Zoltán Stein
The corner plot of the Gesztenyéskert in Budapest’s District XII is highly sensitive from an architectural perspective. At the end of the densely built stretch of Alkotás Road – between the MOM Park shopping centre on one side and the sail-like forms of the Alkotás Point block on the other – it is impossible to ‘fit in’ by conventional means. Turányi’s team won a competition commission for a combined swimming pool–sports hall–fitness complex that serves mass and competitive sport, as well as major events, while maintaining a lively connection to the park behind it. The concept’s core comprises two tightly interlocking volumes, unified above by a multi-angled, undulating roof in copper sheeting. From afar, the roof seems more like a living creature than an architectural element – a crumpled skin at the road junction.
At ground level, a passageway runs alongside the two masses (one housing the pool, the other the sports hall), beginning on Csörsz Street. This covered, open intermediate space mediates between the street and the sports interiors and leads towards the outdoor pitches. A third element, the fitness unit, opens directly onto the street. On the lower levels, however, the entire complex forms a unity, resolving the level difference between street and park. Thanks to the clear circulation, the facility can serve multiple parallel demands at once. Inside, raw concrete walls and the load-bearing structure become impressive visual features; outside, the roof’s irregular, almost organic form is the dominant element. The copper roof becomes part of the surrounding landscape – a living material whose colour will change over time, integrating it further into the park. Its shallow curve seems to reach down towards passers-by; with its stepped timber cladding, it becomes a public place in itself. Its sculptural character is evident – here Turányi returns to the symbolic massing of an earlier phase – yet its irregularity and vitality are striking, making it closer in spirit to the Kopaszi Dam pavilions’ atmospheric attunement to their setting.
Simplon Udvar, Budapest, 2009; co-designer: Bence Turányi
One of Budapest’s District XI urban centres was developed on the site between Fehérvári Road, Bercsényi Street and Váli Road, replacing the former Budai Skála. In urbanistic terms, this was a large-scale undertaking: a vast shopping centre and the surrounding mass of office and residential buildings. The development also set out to bring order to the area’s street structure, transport links, and environmental conditions. By 2009, the Allée shopping centre had been built, and behind and beside it, two larger office and residential buildings – one of them Simplon Udvar, designed by Gábor Turányi and Bence Turányi.
The commission came from ING’s real estate development division, which led the investment. On the plot facing Bercsényi Street, at the rear of the shopping centre, two buildings share the site – the other designed by Lukács és Vikár Építész Stúdió. This means that two independently conceived masses not only respond to the emerging visual world of the New Buda centre and to local architectural traditions, but also strongly influence one another’s appearance. Turányi’s team did not regard this as a constraint but as a given – and, in a relatively rare move within the oeuvre, opted for a powerful, gesture-like appearance that remains closely tied to tradition.
The Bartók Béla Road and Fehérvári Road area has preserved to this day a number of fresh, balanced, elegant modern apartment houses from the 1930s. One such example was the rental-house-and-cinema building Simplon, built in 1933–34 by Gábor Preisich and Mihály Vadász; Turányi’s building takes its name from this predecessor. Simplon Udvar’s prefabricated glass façade, resplendent in saturated colours, its rounded corner, and the balcony boxes projecting with different rhythms on each level bring the building out of its hidden position and cast it as a leading actor in the street scene. The strongly articulated façade – conspicuous in its colour – communicates continuously with the street through the individually set lamellae on the terraces, which make the residential part unreadable from the outside.
The functional distribution is clearly legible on the façade. Above the ground-floor shops, the characteristic open-gallery (gang) form of Budapest tenements returns – but, thanks to the southern wing lifted on supports, it features an inner courtyard opening towards the street. Alongside the three corridor wings, the fourth ‘façade’, the firewall, was transformed by the design into a green wall. Behind the glass walls, the open stairwell is exceptionally elegant, and, in a bold, fresh move, the balustrade is replaced with stainless-steel mesh. The luxury apartments on the top floor retreat subtly from the façade line; compared with the colourful building below, they sit behind moderated white glass walls, with huge terraces and a planted wall – a green island atop the dense inner city of Buda.
The duality running through the oeuvre – the parallel presence of poetic sensibility and strict rationality – was summarised by András Ferkai in connection with Turányi’s exhibition at the 2002 Venice Biennale: “Turányi’s buildings are contextual, humane, and most often emotionless. But if the nature of the task requires it, the designer can be rational.” (Venice Biennale catalogue, 2002.) This double quality – and with it a deep respect for the craft of building, including the fact that he does not subordinate himself to ever-new products of the construction industry, but employs them independently, as the architectural programme demands – sets Gábor Turányi’s architecture apart from that of his contemporaries.
[2016]