The new Ethnographic Museum is groundbreaking on several levels. Moving from its stately location opposite Parliament to the green surroundings of City Park, this major institution is now clad in a signature lace-like façade. The glass exterior of the museum, due to open next spring, features contemporary redefinitions of 20 Hungarian and 20 international ethnographic motifs.
As its roof garden fills with plants, the new Ethnographic
Museum is rapidly taking shape before its grand unveiling next spring. The
building, designed by Napur Architect, is still ringed by a fence in City Park
but its façade can easily be made out.
Its main feature is a metal grid of half a million pixels, on which selected ethnographic motifs from the museum's Hungarian and international collections appear.
The pixels in the glass curtain were inserted into the laser-cut aluminium grid by a robot to create the 20-20 motif. International examples include contemporary Venezuelan, Congolese, Cameroonian, Mongolian, Chinese and Malian motifs. The façade design is not only attractive, but also because it provides shade and helps to save energy.
The arched roof garden will also soon be complete, 7,300 square metres of green space with perennials, shrubs and ornamental grass.
