Sou Fujimoto’s House of Hungarian Music
Photos: Liget Budapest/György Palkó
Delicate, beguiling and studded with trees, the museum has landed in a Budapest park – but behind it is a controversial €1bn vision by rightwing populist leader Viktor Orbán.
A great big crumpet appears to have landed in the middle of Budapest’s City Park, its circular hole-studded mass impaled on a thicket of trees. It droops down here and there, revealing little terraces cut into its top, and flares up elsewhere, showing off a sparkling underside of tiny golden leaves.
This surreal sight is the work of Sou Fujimoto, a Japanese architect known for making his models out of piles of crisps, washing-up scourers, or whatever else may be to hand. In this case, it wasn’t a crumpet but a lotus root that inspired this canopy, which now provides an otherworldly home for the capital’s new House of Hungarian Music. In a city that already has a renowned opera house, music academy and numerous concert halls, what could this €80m (£67m) project possibly add?...
