Liget City Location City: Budapest, Hungary

This heritage-sensitive design concept tightly integrates a number of historic buildings within an existing city centre block in Budapest, Hungary. The Liget City block has extensive urbanistic and historical ties to the surrounding district and our proposals are designed to maximise connections between the site and the city, incorporating existing pedestrian routes.

The proposals pay careful attention to the history of the site, preserving as many of the original buildings and architectural features as possible while optimising the use of these structures and adding efficient extensions and new buildings to complete the overall composition of the city block. The new buildings respond sensitively to the retained structures on the site, particularly in terms of the overall forms, the proportions of the façade openings and the use of materials.

The primary public space is the pedestrian street between the buildings of the current supermarket and the Sawtooth-roof building connecting Damjanich and Dembinszky Streets. The space features distinctive rugged paving, complemented by street furniture, greenery, public art and a parked tram serving as a food kiosk – a reference to when this place once served as a depot. Along its length are bistros, restaurants, the hotel, an events space and student accommodation. This semi-public space is largely adapted to the needs of local residents, with kiosk shops and services, playgrounds, an outdoor gym and residential terraces.

The third key external space is created by the semi-open courtyard of the two Rottenbiller Street buildings, which is further divided into micro-spaces. The first is tied to the hostel's interiors, co-working and rentable studios for start-ups. The second courtyard contains restaurants and their terraces.