Walking to my new favorite bakery in Budapest this morning, I took a different route. I wanted to walk through a really cool, dilapidated courtyard as a shortcut. I came out on a different street, turned the corner and, boom saw the weirdest, coolest thing I’ve seen so far—a building in the middle of the block completely enveloped in a shroud of gold fabric. Dazzling, mesmerizing gold.
Cool! At first I thought it was maybe a Christo-like art installation, but that seemed derivative. There was a QR code, but it led to a dead website. Hmmm….
It was gorgeous, though. It reflected just enough light to look like it was glowing, and you could just make out the various architectural elements pressing against the fabric. I could barely wait to get back to my computer to do some sleuthing.
Turns out it wasn’t just a whim, but a deliberate artistic initiative undertaken by local architecture and design studio Pyxis Nautica and artist Daniel Szalai. They were hired by Optinvest, a boutique real estate developer working on renovating not just the building I stumbled across (a mansion built by one of the Dreher sons), but a couple others nearby.
I found the other buildings and they were pretty cool, too. The intent is apparently to highlight the ongoing renovation of Budapest’s most beautiful buildings—to draw attention to city's rich architectural heritage. It’s certainly eye-catching.
I loved the old and new, ordinary and unexpected, all wrapped up together, right here in the heart of the city. It made you focus on the building—and buildings in Budapest each have a story to tell. By wrapping thes buildings in gold, the architects underlined their existence while highlighting ongoing preservation work in the city.
The general consensus among Budapesters online is positive, though many remain perplexed. Some felt compelled to complain about the expense and carp about how that money could’ve been used for other, more pressing concerns. Ummm…it’s a private enterprise people, not the government. I’m just glad they spent some money on something that was fun to look at instead of the standard, nasty scaffolding.
Honestly, now that we know that buildings under renovation can be cool, more developers should do something like this.
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