Renovationwithinfamiliarwalls

The house on Csokonai Street is the new home of a young couple and their small children. Previously used as the grandparents’ holiday home, transforming this “familiar and cherished place” required particular sensitivity and care.

The family wished for a spacious yet intimate living environment. The house was designed to support both shared family moments and parallel everyday activities unfolding side by side with the children. On the ground floor, the dark, fragmented layout was opened up by removing partition walls, resulting in a bright, continuous living space. Functional areas were consolidated along the northern side, accommodating the bathroom, walk-in wardrobe, mechanical room, and pantry. The home office, occasionally used as a guest room, was also placed here; its loose, flexible connection to the living area allows it to relate more strongly to the common space than its function alone would suggest.

At the intersection of the multi-centered living areas, a curved spatial constriction was introduced. This transitional zone creates tension in movement, briefly slowing down the passage in both space and time, and gently guides the view from the entrance toward the large panoramic window of the living room, delaying the full reveal of the scenery.

The sunset over the Inner Lake is framed by a panoramic window with a recessed, heated parapet. Slightly angled toward the sunset in relation to the tiled stove, the window allows the view to be fully enjoyed even when sitting on the edge of the stove.

In the family’s vision, the kitchen functions as one of the central spaces of the home, concentrating both everyday life around the children and the reception of guests. The previously covered but enclosed terrace was converted into an interior space to accommodate this function. The load-bearing wall was replaced almost along its full length, allowing a generous counter to connect this area seamlessly with the dining space.

With this intervention, the characterful stone vaults, which were previously hidden from the interior, were “freed” with this gesture: they are now visible from multiple viewpoints and finally receive the attention they deserve.

The architect reflects on the project with the following thoughts: “In this project, I learned a great deal about how I want to communicate architecture to clients: without sterile perfectionism, without premature detailing—focusing instead on the small, everyday moments of their lives, expressed in a direct and easily relatable way that they can fall in love with. From that point on, we were able to talk about what truly matters, thinking together as a team. In the end, they inhabited the house exactly as I had envisioned—shaping the same life situations I had imagined during the design process. The accompanying drawings and photographs evoke these shared ideas and imagined scenes.”