New Museum of Ethnography

The new building of the Museum of Ethnography inBudapestCityPark (Városliget) was opened (on 23/05/2022). The multiple-award-winningnew museum building – which is part of Europe’s largest urban-culturaldevelopment called LigetBudapestProject - designed by FERENCZ,Marcel;Napur Architect- has dynamic yet simple lines simultaneouslyharmonized with the park environment and communicating with the surroundingurban area. The City Park (Városliget) is not an entirely unknown venue for theMuseum of Ethnography, since it was here in 1896, at the National MillenniumExhibition. The collection, which now comprises 250 thousand items from theCarpathian Basin and from every corner of the world, has been hosted by variousfacilities since its establishment in 1872, but never in its history did itoperate in a building designed specifically to cater to its needs. The currentlocation, which once was home to the Hungarian Curia, is far from beingsuitable to meet the requirements of a museum and is severely limited in termsof space and opportunities. As a result of the international designcompetition, successful construction, and completion in May 2022 the Museum ofEthnography was finally given a new home in a truly modern building of anall-around world-class standard that will satisfy professional requirementswhile catering to the needs of the collection and visitors alike. According to the decision of an international jury, the competition waswon by the Hungarian architectural studio,Napur Architect(beatingleading world-class architect studios such as Zaha Hadid, BIG, etc. ), whosebuilding is distinguished by a dynamic yet simple design harmonized with thenatural environment of the park while communicating with the urban texture ofits surroundings. The gently curving lines enable the building to function as agateway and a passage linking the city and the park. Sixty percent of thestructure is under ground level, and thanks to the landscaped roof and thetransparency of the sections over the ground, the new museum is adapted to itsenvironment in its scale too. The grass-covered roof area will be a pleasantcommunity space awaiting visitors to Városliget. The spectacular trademark of the building is the glass curtain wallsurrounding the landscaped roof garden, reminiscent of two intertwinedhillsides, with a unique characteristic, consisting of nearly half a millionpixels, a raster made by metal grid based on ethnographic motifs selected fromthe museum's Hungarian and international collections. The pixels were insertedinto a laser-cut aluminum grid by a special robot, more than 2,000 of which areattached to the building. The small cubes were made up of 20 Hungarian and 20international contemporary reinterpretations of ethnographic motifs. The Museum of Ethnography is already recognized as one of the mostexciting contemporary buildings in the continent. Evidence of that, it wasvoted for the Best Mega Futura Project of Europe (as part of the Liget Project)at the MIPIM Awards 2017 and has won the fiercely contested title of World’sBest Architecture at the 2018 International Property Awards. The project wasone of over 1700 entries from 115 countries, scrutinized by a judgingcommittee, which is chaired by four UK Lords as well as over 80 global experts. The new functions and flexible spaces of the modern andstate-of-the-art museum building will facilitate the understanding of thehistorical heritage embodied by the collection as well as the various aspectsof contemporary society. Besides passing down this historical heritage, therealization of more recent professional and research themes and perspectivescontinues to be among the priority objectives of the museum, as confirmed byits mission. The creatively built spaces will open up new opportunities tocommunicate with visitors, enabling the presentation of the everyday objects,phenomena, and ideas of the past and the present side by side. The purpose-builtmuseum was designed with maximum consideration for the required functions, andthus facilitates the large-scale, modern, user-friendly operation of theinstitution to a significant degree, along with the visually enticing anddiverse display of mankind’s material and spiritual heritage, as well as thecollection comprising Hungarian and international material. Project name: New Museum of Ethnography General Design, Architect: NAPUR Architect Ltd. Lead Architect, Author: FERENCZ, Marcel DLA Project Location: Budapest, Hungary_Városliget Client: Városliget Zrt. Benedek Gyorgyevics, the CEO of Városliget Zrt Lajos Kemecsi, the director of the Museum of Ethnography László Baán, the project’s ministerial commissioner. Architecture firm: Napur Architect LtD. Principal architect: Marcel FERENCZ Design team: György Détári Filó Gergely Holyba Pál Nyul Dávid Grócz Csaba Mészáros Mónika