House of Music Hungary, Concert hall in Zugló, Hungary.
The House of Music Hungary stands in the City Park beside the Városligeti lake, on the site of the demolished Hungexpo offices. Sou Fujimoto's design sets a low glass-walled volume beneath a broad, undulating canopy whose dark outer surface is pierced by a dense pattern of small irregular holes; underneath, large oval openings are lined in pale yellow. Slender grey columns carry the roof past the walls, and the building is divided into three levels: museum and a sound dome below ground, concert rooms and an outdoor stage at ground level, music education and a library above.
The House of Music Hungary was built on the site of the demolished Hungexpo offices next to the Városligeti-tó, following a 2014 design competition won by Sou Fujimoto Architects. Construction began in 2018 and the building opened to the public on 22 January 2022, the Day of Hungarian Culture. It forms part of the Liget Budapest Project, and its construction drew protests from Ligetvédők from 2015 onward.
The name refers to the source: the logo's broken circle that becomes whole echoes tree rings, water ripples and sound waves, and the circle painted on tree trunks marks a spring, a motif tied to Bartók. The permanent exhibition Hangdimensionen leads from early human music-making through folk, church music, opera, Liszt and Bartók to pop, using spatial headphones.
The building sits in the Városliget beside the Városligeti-tó, near Vajdahunyad Castle and behind the planned Museum of Ethnography, on the site of the demolished Hungexpo offices. It is split over three levels: museum spaces and a sound dome below ground, concert rooms with an outdoor stage on the ground floor, music education and the library upstairs. The house opened to the public on 22 January 2022, the Day of Hungarian Culture.
The building is cooled using energy from the nearby Városliget ice rink, and most of its energy demand is covered by renewable sources. Its first world premiere was a work by András Derecskei on 19 February 2022, during the Choirs' Winter Night series.
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