a&o Hostel – Budapest, VII. Csengery utca

Current state

The building is located in downtown Budapest, on the corner of Dob street – Csengery streets. It was built in 1896 for the card manufacture, later a district Municipality offices were here. It is a basement, ground floor, 3 stories, attic building with an interior courtyard, circular aisle, street side with two, courtyard side with a tract, an open-air main staircase and a service staircase. It’s structure is traditional.

Although the building does not enjoy national or territorial protection, it’s façades, doors and windows are decorated with art nouveau motifs. The exterior insulation of the building’s facade is prohibited by the local regulation.The Dob street neighbor of the building is protected building, a local school designed by Ármin Hegedűs, the  neighboring building in Csengery street is a residential one.The function is currently a community accomodation building under the registration of the Land Registry since March 23, 2012, the number of beds currently certified is 200.

Design Concept

Function of the planned facility: community accommodation. A&o Hostels as Client intends to implement the development in two steps. In phase I. with the existing building volume retained, the renovation of the building, the widening of the service staircase, the installation of adequate capacity lifts and building a new slab in the attic are planned. Interventions in Phase I has to serve Phase II. In Phase II. the attic will be converted to accommodate rooms with raising the roofs of the  the courtyard side and to cover the court yard with a cross-ventilated glazed roof at the top.

Planned status The planned community accommodation capacity is 83 rooms and 320 beds.The Hostel rooms are equipped with 2, 4, 6 bedded rooms, each room has a washbasin, toilet and shower facilities, 6-bed rooms with washbasin, shower and toilet, hand wash separately. The rooms have traditional and bunk beds. Each floor has a room service room.The vertical circulation system of the typical floors consists of the retained main staircase, the enlarged service staircase, the open air aisle connecting them, and the interiors corridors. In front of the main staircase there will be two new lifts in the courtyard. On the ground floor, the main entrance hall of the Hostel, reception + bar, back office, breakfast room + conference room, 300-400 breakfast and finishing kitchen and some rooms facing the courtyard, including two disabled rooms are planned. The guests’ kitchen and laundry and a disabled toilet will ba also on the ground floor. The service entrance of the building is placed in the last axis on Dob street with a load-lifting plate. The last three axises on Csengery street will be designated as a tenant space with a separate destination unit with an access from the street. For the currently unknown tenant, we provide the signage space  on the portals. The basement is divided into two functional units. Hostel guests can access from the lift block+ corridor a luggage storage, safe deposit box, public toilet, bicycle storage room. From the basement’s service corridor opens the workshop, clean and dirty linen storage, general storages,  kitchen storage and refrigerators, staff changing rooms and waste containers room. In the basement spaces breathable plaster and painting will be applied with intensive mechanical ventilation.The current basement boiler room and gas meter are located beside the back staircase of the building. Client wants to keep these equipment together with the boiler chimneys. The gas pipeline, currently on the outside of the courtyard wall, will be moved to the basement.

Renovation of facade  Historical valuation documentation of the façade and fenestration of the building has been made, which is an integral part of this description. The plastered facades of the building featuring Art Nouveau elements suffered significant damage to the street sides, the original plastered surface represented only 1/3 of the façade, the remaining surface is brick. The courtyard facades are in good condition.The renovation of the façade is based on samples taken from the remaining details. The refurbished façade will be painted with off-white color KEIM …, the wooden main cornice  will be painted RAL … white. On both street sides the vertical rainwater pipes at the site borders will be moved to the groove originally designed for this purpose. The red-limestone bases of the building should be renovated as necessary.

Renovation of fenestration

All the façade windows facing the street and the courtyard are uniformly formulated with a horizontal division bar, with a lower section with two opening wings, and one side opening wing in the upper section, or with three opening wings in both lower and upper sections. The windows are two-layered, connected „Geréb type”, with an internal wooden frame structure,  and the roller shutter cover.

The ground floor windows of the street facades, except for the main entrance entrance, are not original. Masonry parapets are not original, the windows are single-layered, insulated structures, their division does not fit to the nature of the building.

We plan to renovate the doors and windows of all the court and street façades that were in the original condition. In order to improve the heat and sound insulation of the doors and windows two-layer insulating glass will be installed. The horizontal division element of  wings of certain windows that hes been demolished will be restored. The exterior color of the wooden doors will be RAL .. light gray, inner surfaces and framings RAL 9010 white. The original fittings of the doors and windows (fittings, door handles,) should be retained.

We dismantle the parapet walls on the ground floor, up to the height of the footing, and modern portals will be placed. Portals are thermal proof aluminum structures, RAL 7016 anthracite gray, typically double layer transparent insulating glazing. The service entrance door will have foil or sand blown glass. The portals will have a glazed advertisement surface strip of painted glass wilt ligthing letterheads. from behind. On both street façades, on the II. floor height there are 2-2 original steel curved flagposts to be renovated with RAL 7018 anthracite gray finish.

Lighting of Csengery and Dob street façade

The concept of decorative lighting was developed jointly with ERCO. The intended solution does not envisage the illumination of the full façade, but only it’s characteristic elements. We propose to light  vertical lesenes the starting from the II. floor cornice and curved facade embellishments from the height of I. floor. According to this concept, there are 6 + 2 pieces on Csengery Street side and on 8+2 pieces on Dob Street side from ERCO 33532.000 type façade lighting fixtures.