HungaroControl Headquarters (ANS II) - Budapest

The Hungarocontrol Headquarters is the new center for the Hungarian Air Navigation Services. This is one of the most important non-religious buildings of Tamás Nagy.

architect: Tamás NAGY - LINT Ltd.
colaborating architects: Tamás Lévai, Viktória Simon, András Sipos, Gergely Sándor
interior design: Erika Ignácz, Kinga Kismarthy-Lechner
year of design/construction: 2002/2003
photography: © Tamás NAGY

The new building is near the Budapest Airport and connected to an existing building which is also part of the aircontroling services. The area is Ferihegy: the airport; a family housing area is a nondescript character. The office building is an unique and self-enclosed unit which can display all that the architect thinks of this function. Sinchrony is perfect between the ordering of the functions of the building and the form receiving it: offices in the three lateral wings and strung like beads along the communicating backbone of the building following one another along diagonal axes run right in the centre.

The rigid functional system and the spacious courtyards give the skeleton of the office building. On this basic structure there is an other layer which consists of the claddings, shading systems. The brick cladding and the puritan modeling of the mass give a Skandinavian aftetaste of the building.On this layer appears the brick architectural details, apertures which is so typical to Tamás Nagy’s architecture. Level high brick fences connect the masses between the courtyards.

The most exciting part of the office building is the lamella system s hanging made up by glass plates.As a reference to the activities of the organization specialized in air navigation service there are more or less abstract fragmentary images representing feathers as the symbols of on boltered glas surfaces. The texture of scanned feathers have undergone peculiar changes because of the computerized application and refining and the specifics of the technique of painting used here.

Since 2003 handover, the company overgrew the building so they called for proposals for the office building extention (ANS III) on the neighbouring site, it was built by ZSK architects in 2011.

translation: Rita DOLMÁNY