Miklós Barabás, the significant Hungarian painter of the XIX. century, bought a vineyard at Városmajor with the help of one of his friends in 1839, which back then similarly consisted a press house and a cellar. In 1840, the artist built up the classicist-style villa according to his own plans and ideas. The house served as a studio as well, almost every remarkable person of the time sat for a portrait here. It was later expanded with a new place, where he lived for 30 years. Under the villa there was a large cellar (suitable for wine storage) which was connected with the wine-dresser house by an underground tunnel. In 1870 the house was sold, and since then it had many owners. The building complex was changing according to the different styles and needs of the various owners, therefore the original villa became unrecognizable. After nationalization of the building its estate became from bad to worse, in the 80's it turned into dangerous consistence.
In 2000, the government of XII. district decided to entirely renovate the villa, instead of selling it. The tender for design was won by us, we designed the renovation plans with the help of Barabás' aquarelle.
The basic concept of the renovation was to keep the original parts – the villa (90 m²) and the wine-dresser house (70 m²) – to take down the later ones, and extend the complex with 1000 m² for new functions.
The renewed classicist villa – works as exhibition room - is now in the forefront, while other parts – restaurant and its kitchen – of the complex are under the surface. The new erected parts like the café and the periodically working little gallery held back in a modest way, and they seem to be rather just parts of the beautiful garden. In this case modern architecture does not aspire to be in the foreground but gives with its pliableness and flexibility intelligent surroundings for the monument being in center.
In 2004, the building complex received the Europa Nostra Award, the highest award of European architecture. (architects' text)