Budapest NNGA & LMU

A composite mass soars over Budapest City Park to educate and inspire

The New National Gallery and Ludwig Museum [NNGA & LMU] Building stems from a paradox presented by the competition brief: the problematic need to partially integrate two distinct cultural institutions within a single building so they can coexist independently from and yet interrelated to each other. Conceptually and physically, the building is a composite mass of two distinct, discrete, and adjacent volumes, which, leaning against each other, engender a larger albeit non-differential whole. The project’s mass comprises four vertically tapered hyperbolic shapes, which, like truncated pyramids, disrupt the horizontality of the park. Much like the medieval castles in City Park, the mass is both imposing and sublime. Unlike its neoclassical counterparts, the new proposal is also socially engaging by being permeable at ground level and accessible to pedestrians.

The surfaces are articulated with an abstract dazzle pattern, which is projected over most of the building following the main public promenade across the City Park. The pixelated gradient nature of the texture intensifies towards the main entry passage where the two building volumes connect, enhancing visual experience and facilitating entrance. Being both graphically pleasing and materially quiet in its expression, the building appears at the same time iconic and mute, idiosyncratic and timeless.