Face, Pool, Two Towers and Ruin

Modernist housing estates are dismissed, as is Haszkovó in the city of Veszprém. Their stories are understood as the stories of failed urban developments, they are said to be grey, sad and soulless. Can something be soulless and disenchanted that gives home to 20 000 inhabitants? Let’s have a thought exercise and put our biases aside. Are we ready to reconsider our relation to the housing projects and think of them as “real cities” for a moment? If so, how can we go even further and fill it up with creative ideas?

In the framework of Veszprém Design Week, the exhibition invites visitors to experience change in the current condition of Haszkovó brought about by five portable and durable urban artifacts in the open air.

The five objects serves as playful, outdoor furniture and their architectural quality also helps us to perceive Haszkovó as something similar to a lovely historical downtown in any cities. In the centre of Veszprém these are common objects, such as the places “where we meet before going to party” or “where we had our first kiss”. The ‘Fire Lookout Tower’, the ‘Statue of Zsuzsi’ or the ‘Clock’ deliver this sensation of orientation and memory for the collectiv, inextricably embedded in the urban texture of Veszprém. The exhibition provides an alternative to establish distinctive objects also in Haszkovó.

Last year the show 12 Walls was the very first step of a large scale international collaborative project. That time emerging architects observed and presented the problem of ornamentation. This year five other young studios and architects from Greece, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Hungary address the problem of urban artifacts.