Zen House, Budaliget
The most important considerations when designing the building included a simple structure; a transparent, organized floor plan; a generous and open-space collection of communal spaces with a grandiose link to the garden; and a sculptural building mass.
The single-storey building is approx. 260 square meters. It has a square floor plan and an interior patio that you can walk around. Its structure has a monolithic reinforced concrete pillar frame and slab, with infill masonry on the facade and in the interior. The interior pillars are free-standing, while the pillars on facade are integrated into the exterior walls. The walls of the facade are clad in light grey stone, which is smooth on the flat surfaces and coarse on the curved surfaces. The doors and windows have a black aluminum frame, and most of them go from floor to ceiling, with metal blinds hidden in the slab. The building can be positioned on any roughly level lot where the building code allows a free-standing construction of approx. 300 square meters, and the lot can accommodate it. The design works with a symmetrical layout. We arrive to a spacious hallway set in the axis of the building, which houses a cloakroom and a toilet with sink, also linking to a two-car garage.
From the hallway we can see the uncovered patio set in the center of the building, with a water feature and plants. Corridors wrap around the patio on both sides, from where we can access the open-plan kitchen-diner-living room area. The bedrooms open from the corridors and have en-suite closets and bathrooms.
The corridors and the living room have a contiguous solid wood floor finish. The hallway, the bathrooms, and the walkways and patios around the building are finished in grey stone. The interior pillars and the ceilings have exposed concrete surfaces. The corridor is paneled in wood and houses integrated wooden book shelves. The panels are broken up by wooden rods where the walls turn into the communal area. The interior walls are earth-colored. The exterior wall of the patio is clad in stone. The southern facade of the building is fully covered in glazed sliding doors. The exposed concrete roof slab extends beyond the outline of the building, and at the southern patio and above the entrance it further extends to create covered patios. The building is clad in sheet metal and slopes towards the patio, or it has a walkable green flat roof with interior drainage.
