The curatorial team of project Othernity thinks so. We think that instead of destroying and transforming it, we should use modernism. These buildings were created for a bygone era and society, with limited resources, but with great efforts and ideals. We are, again, living in times of great changes. We should therefore also change how we think about heritage, values and protection, and focus on the part of this architectural heritage that we find truly meaningful for our present and for our future.

We think that buildings created in a suction economy, by using limited materials can offer methods and ways that come handy when building for our future. We think that community and public architecture should maintain its previously aggravated role through self-confident and forward-looking architecture design processes. We think that buildings should be created for communities, not societies. We think that there is power in thinking and acting on a regional level.

Hence the pavilion invites 12 young and emerging architectural studios and practices from Central and Eastern Europe to recondition 12 socialist modernist buildings from Budapest. These architects, given the common historical background of their home countries, are at the same time close enough to and far enough from these buildings of Budapest.

The generation of the exhibiting architects is the first one, who did not experience socialism directly, and has no memory of the architectural production methods of that era. At the same time they were raised between these buildings and they do have common experiences and memories of these socialist environments whether they are from Warsaw, Bratislava, Belgrade, Tallinn, Skopje, Zagreb, Krakow, Bucharest or Prague.

We see this project as a new, collaborative method to rethink our ways of heritage protection; as an example for a more responsible architectural community and a more sensible society.

How will we live together, asks Hashim Sarkis, chief curator of the 17th Biennale of Architecture. Our answer is: by using what we have, but in a more understanding, innovative and emotional way. Or, actually, in 12.

Show less...

The buildings are located in the Hungarian capital and were all built between the early 1960s and the late 1980s, which means that we use ‘modernism’ in a broad sense. All buildings are kept in their almost-original state; all are used by different communities. We aimed to represent a functional scale, typical for any country of the former Eastern bloc. None of the chosen buildings enjoys official protection.

The invited practices are

A-A Collective (Poland / Denmark / Switzerland)
Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop (Hungary)
BUDCUD (Poland)
b210 (Estonia)
KONNTRA (Slovenia / North Macedonia / Croatia)
MADA (Serbia)
MNPL WORKSHOP (Ukraine)
Paradigma Ariadné (Hungary)
PLURAL (Slovakia)
Vojtěch Rada (Czechia)
LLRRLLRR (Estonia / United Kingdom)
Studio Act (Romania)

The selected buildings are:

Déli railway station (1962, 1977), designed by György Kővári, office: MÁVTI;
Dob Street Electric Substation (1965), designed by Ernő Léstyán, office: ERŐTERV;
OTP apartment building (1967), designed by Zoltán Boross, office: BUVÁTI;
OKISZ headquarters (1973), designed by János Mónus, office: ÁÉTV;
Domus furniture store (1974), designed by Péter Reimholz and Antal Lázár, office: IPARTERV;
Újpalota apartment tower (1976), designed by Tibor Tenke, office: TTI;
Planetarium (1977), designed by László Lux along with the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics;
National Power Dispatch Centre (1979), designed by Csaba Virág, office: LAKÓTERV;
Party headquarters for the 13th District of Budapest (1979, today seat of the Hungarian State Treasury), designed by Margit V. Pázmándi, office: ÁÉTV;
Calvinist church of Külső-Kelenföld (1981), designed by István Szabó as a private practitioner;
Kelenföld City Center (1979), designed by István Zilahy and József Bada, office: Lakóterv;
Endre Ady Cultural Centre of Újpest (1986), designed by István Ferencz, office: ÉSZAKTERV.

The Hungarian Pavilion of the 17. International Architecture Exhibition highlights both the individual values of the original buildings and the unusual, innovative results of this collaborative research and design process as an attempt to offer new perspectives on this often-disputed era.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, with essays by:
Edwin Heathcote, architectural critic (Financial Times);
Ákos Moravánszky, architecture professor (ETH Zürich);
and the curatorial team.

Show less...