Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)
A Kazánház és a kémény - The Boiler-House and the chimney Gy. Balogh Ágnes
1 9 6 chance that Pecz adjusted it to the middle axis of the Campus site in the break-point of Bertalan Lajos Street. In a note dated February 4th, 1909 the contract signed by Károly Knuth general contractor specifies that the central heating system of the university was to be started on February 1 st at the latest. Flowever, Knuth failed to do so up until the 4th of the month. After the survey of the premises, the contractor was requested to effect the commission and start up heating "without further delay". Signatures of Pecz and József Benedicty prove that heating was started on the 5th in the MT Building, whilst Knuth signed that the same happened in the southern wing of the main building and in the MG Building on the 6th of the same month. Benedicty's entry, however, documents that in the MG Building heating was successfully started up even later: on February 8th. Although the heating system had already been used for a year by then, the deployment permit of the "factory chimney" (as well as that of the observatory) was only signed on January 10th, 1910. On this occasion it was constipulated that the chimney must be equipped with a smoke-bell, the boiler with smoke-annihilator, and that heating is to be supplied exclusively with fuels burning free of smoke. The building permit issued onJanuary27th, 1910 allowing to install the heating system specifies that four Tischbein boilers "made by István Rock Budapest" supplied the steam for the steam-heating system of every room of the University of Technology, this time including the Chemistry Building as well. The permit also specified that the boiler space had to be a light and fire-proof room with a ceilingless roof structure, where a secondary roof was to facilitate proper ventillation, whilst the steam-boiler positioned 3-3 metres from both the site boundaries and the dwelling rooms contained on the sites of their own. The permit of entry into use forthe heating system was signed on August 31st, 1910. At the time of its construction, the building featured a large gable-roofed hall space and additional annexes. The wooden-frame gable-roof covering the hall featured a fixed framework along the ridge to facilitate the natural ventilation of the 15x30 m space. Originally this structure was only continued from the north by a smaller two-storey wing articulated by pitch-roofs and terraces which lent the industrial-tone building dynamic and castle-like appearance. This wing contained a coal depot, cinders lift and a room on the ground floor, whilst the upper storey was used as the engineer's dwelling with access to the fibre-cemented terrace. The roofings were R-C structures. To serve boiler-room functions, in the cellar, which had just as large a floor-space as the superstructure, the cinders passage and chamber, the pump-room and the reservoir were contained. The boiler-room was roofed with a rarely used system which Pecz favoured and used extensively: roof timbers of a major-rafter minor purlin system gable-roof containing steel pull bar major rafters within which the ties braced up with coupling screws were fixed up to the purlin-posts and the central kingposts. (The student's reading room of the Library features a similar system.) Facade designs are similar to those of other buildings of the University of Technology designed by Pecz, and as such they also feature forms evoking medieval vocabulary, which is a distinguishing characteristic of his oeuvre. Thus the Boiler-Plouse is enriched with details carved of hard freshwater limestone and drypressed brick alternating with rendered finishes. Flowever, these facades lack colourful glazed, enamelled or even untreated decorative panels, as opposed to his other buildings in the Campus, which is expressive of the simpler function of the Boiler-Plouse. Although Pecz Samu announced he had created “...a system building from the inside to outside" with his buildings, he actually designed this mass to be more imposing than industrial buildings are as a rule, despite its functions. The eastern and western facades of the Boiler-Plouse evoke medieval designs of basilicas, although the entrances are asymmetrically positioned, which was typical of designs by Pecz. The southern facade was originally meant to feature simple segment-headed windows with accentuated brickwork finishes. The northern facade of the building was the most dynamic one with flat-roof and pitch-roof, spire-like volumes, windows in versatile formats, spectacular brick parapets and predominantly brickwork finishes. Heating "was installed to annihilate smoke, relying on coal from Hungary". The steam produced was conveyed by a dual pipe-line through underground passages to the buildings. All service lines were equipped with terminal and spare valves allowing to exclude individual groups in case of pipe bursts whilst keeping up operation forthe rest of the system. From the secondary centres in the buildings low-pressure steam
