From a classic Kádár cube
to a modern incubator house

Main ProjectsODOU Community Office

ODOU Community Office

Client: Actanon Kft.

Location: Szentendre

Architect: Attila Tóth

Services: Architectural design, General design, Interior design

Sectors: Office, Public bulding, Teaching & Research

We were asked to redesign a commercial building at the gateway to Szentendre, Budapest, to create a technically and architecturally renewed coworking office building by partially demolishing and rebuilding the facility and adding a new wing. The ODOU community office project was implemented in a closed-BIM system, with all disciplines (architect, engineer, interior designer) designing in the same software ecosystem (Autodesk Revit).

Coworking spaces
in a premium environment

At the entrance of Szentendre

Metamorphosis in several steps

Visitors arriving from Budapest meet the complex of buildings on which the project is based in the suburbs. Originally a “Kádár-cube”, the building was first converted in 2010, adding a flat-roofed story and a new gable-roofed wing. The change of ownership in 2019 also brought a new vision, with BuildEXT being asked in September to redesign the building to suit the new use.

The structure at the corner of Dózsa györgy út and Stromfeld Aurél utca is an important part of Szentendre’s suburban image

Fine art and community building

The investor envisioned a coworking office building with 55 workstations, where local art and sustainability are actively present in every part of the building.

According to the plans, artists from Szentendre will be able to regularly use the common spaces for temporary exhibitions, while the café room in the lobby will be used by the office staff for professional events, training sessions, and formal meetings after working hours. The support of local resources will also be reflected in other ways: the building’s image, logo, in-house signage, infographics, and other decorative elements will be designed and branded by a Szentendre-based graphic designer.

Closed-BIM
on a smaller scale

Building information modelling for small investments

The client’s requirements and the site conditions, as well as other considerations, all pushed the project towards the BIM methodology, which was finally implemented in a closed-BIM system.

Thanks to the common platform, work has become much more dynamic. All disciplines worked simultaneously on the latest version of the same model, communication was quick and easy, and the client could walk through the house in 3D with a realistic visualization from the conceptual design stage.

Separate, spacious spaces for working in comfort

Temporary exhibitions can be organized in community spaces

Shared meeting rooms in several sizes

We have designed rooms of practical size for small meetings

Cosy breakfast and coffee area for community building

Kitchen for office needs

Local artists can even organize literary evenings

Clean, tidy, modern spaces and colours

Design

The design also reacted to the situation caused by COVID-19, which changed not only the workflow but also the interior design concept at the request of the client. So rather than the original “open office” approach, we changed the design to a more cellular structure to ensure worker separation, which also changed the number of workstations and the proportion of communal/separate seating.

Where possible, sensors have been used to replace surfaces that require direct physical contact. Thus, a touch-free wet room, combined hand dryer technology, and a lever-operated door with an automatic door opener were included in the design.

The new function and the new building complex were subject to a planning permission procedure, which must also be preceded by a planning council opinion procedure.

The original idea was a slanted solution

The version following approval by the Planning Council

As a specific goal of the project was to design a near-zero energy building, special attention was paid in the model to reduce conventional energy consumption and cooling energy:

the building will use renewable energy sources (air-to-water heat pumps and solar panels to support the electricity supply) for cooling and heating and domestic hot water, and

to reduce cooling energy, we designed a solar-sensing shutter for the façade.

We have contributed to improving the quality of the built environment by improving the existing poor street drainage, planting new trees, and adding green surfaces to one of the facades.

Green surfaces and renewable
energy for sustainability

Of course, it wouldn’t be a truly sustainable building if we left out the transport aspects; we help tenants get to work in an environmentally friendly way with bike storage. In order to serve the increased parking space requirements, as recommended by the Planning Board and due to the function, new parking spaces were added in the public area by redesigning the stormwater drainage ditches in the public area and replacing the existing overhead cable with underground cable.

In the end, the building was easily awarded AA+ (outstandingly high energy performance) energy certification as planned, based on an energy performance indicator (only 44.5 kWh) much lower than the overall energy performance requirement (100 kWh).

Construction

Once again, the 3D model built in Revit will play a decisive role in the actual construction during the design phase, which will be handed over to the client, going beyond a traditional design office product. We can then help him to integrate the as-built model into the FM software, so that any renovation or maintenance work, interior or otherwise, can be carried out much more efficiently and cheaply.

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