Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)
Office Blocks and Public Buildings
the two-phase investment was the Public Constructions Company. In the first phase the office block (the tower), in the second the kitchen, the restaurant, the operations centre and, finally, in 1982, the workers' hostel were made. Thirteen floors of the eighteen-storey tower block contain offices. The building has a combined volume of 25 thousand cubic metres. Its structural core comprises four reinforced-concrete tubes, which contain the staircases, the lifts and the toilets. The flat building connecting the office block and the hostel houses the operations centre. The prefab concrete slabs on the facade were made in a plant of the Budapest Waterworks. The Water Management Office on the Danube Bank — the Vituki high rise on Csepel Island No. i Kvassay Jenő út, District IX A scientific mainstay of Hungary's water management and natural conservation, this research institute has its head office in a tower block built in 1976, in a well- kept leafy environment near the Kvassay Dam regulating the water levels of the Danube at the tip of Csepel Island. The building was designed by a team headed by István Mühlbacher at the Industrial Designers Company as early as 1971. The fact that the research institute was moved into such a fine building was due to the rising prestige and significance of water management. Located in the space at the bottom of the block resting on a merely 20-by- 22-metre base were a conference hall and a modern library. The floors of the rein- forced-concrete tower built with sliding-shutter technology were arranged around the stairwell and the lift shaft, with the rooms located along right behind the fafade. Communication between the floors is maintained by two lifts, a main and an emergency staircase. The highest point of the building rises 57.77 metres above ground level; an ever increasing number of communications devices are located here. The roof offers a spectacular panorama; observable from here is the South Pest Water Treatment Plant lying deep below or, across the river in Lágymányos Bay, the earthwork being done on the New Buda development project. Another attractive sight is the metal clasp of Lágymányos Bridge connecting the two banks to each other, and one can take an inventory of the capital’s chimneys and smokestacks, too. 30
