Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)
A Központi épület - The Central Building Zsembery Ákos
THE CENTRAL BUILDING 94 CD z: CD Designed by Alajos Hauszmann, the main building of the University of Technology is the largest and most representative one in the historic Campus featuring an imposing main facade overlooking the River Danube. Referred to as K Building, it was built from 1906 to 1909 in late-Historicist style. From Czigler's concept of the Campus we only know of the main building because of a ground-plan and a sketch of the mass. Documentation suggests a highly imposing architectural programme. According to these sketches, the volume of the main building is not any smaller than that of today. Thus Czigler's malicious remark addressed to Hauszmann who grumbled over the small ratio of state sponsoring during the negotiations of the new campus project in 1902: "Hauszmann professor would probably wish to build the University of Technology as pompously as the royal castle...”, as opposed to his "simple buildings devoted to science". Czigler used two main axes to develop the longish rhomboid site of the Campus. The more prominent one was the east-west axis perpendicularto the Danube on which he strung the Central Building and the Library. With the Ch Building and its main axis he opened another diagonal one and placed three pavilions along it. However, this axis is disrupted by the enormous mass of the Central Building. The D pavilion (the "Freshers pavilion”— on the site of today's MM-MG Building) would have been the main attraction on the Danube side, whilst the other pavilions were erected along Budafoki Street and Bertalan Lajos Street. This orderwas only disrupted by the Library building. The architectural programme, with pure-style pavilions with Czigler's integral designs, was highly elegant. Both the block-type design by Czigler and Hauszmann's almost T-shaped central building is a fine example.
