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Former BME students receive the first Bálint Nagy Award
2025. 10. 13.
Three of the four young architects who received the award graduated from ÉPK, and one of them is a lecturer at the faculty.
This year, for the first time, a call for applications for the Bálint Nagy Architecture Award has been launched, with the declared aim of drawing attention to young architects whose work represents high architectural quality, exemplary ethics and responsibility to the community. Members of the Department of Creative Architecture of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts are behind the initiative. The award was established in memory of Bálint Nagy, Kossuth and Ybl Prize-winning architect, who had been a notable art director of the FUGA Budapest Center of Architecture for more than a decade.
13 people applied for the first call for applications. The Board of Trustees, composed of academics Tamás Czigány, Nóra Demeter, László Kalmár, Levente Szabó and László Vincze, selected 3 applications that "embody diverse and complex intellectual endeavours, and a broad range of authentic architectural responsibility".
The award winners are: Dániel Baló, Anna Breuer and an award shared between Dániel Hartvig and Dávid Kálna. With the exception of Dániel Baló, who graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), all award winners were students of the Faculty of Architecture at BME.
Anna Breuer has already won an international award for her master thesis plan on interfaith dialogue entitled House of Religions, Hohenems (pictured below). She worked for the internationally renowned Baumschlager Eberle Architekten and for Hetedik Műterem, including contributing to the winning application in the design contest for the Klauzál Square Ghetto Monument. Anna Breuer is an invited lecturer at the Department of Public Building Design at BME. She approaches architecture from a human perspective, addressing elementary and important issues such as the coexistence of different cultures, sustainable building and the impact of space on people, as stated in her laudation.
Dávid Kálna's thesis, the reconstruction of the block next to the Eastern Railway Station, won the MÉK-MÉSZ thesis prize. He has been a key member of the MCXVI architectural firm for many years. Dániel Hartvig has worked in several architectural studios and has had the opportunity to contribute to such major projects as the reconstruction of the Western Railway Station and the new Museum of Transport (pictured below). The pair have won three major calls in a row in recent years: the Mari Törőcsik memorial, the Vilma Bernovits memorial and the international call "Barcelona blind walls".
Dávid Kálna's thesis, the reconstruction of the block next to the Eastern Railway Station, won the MÉK-MÉSZ thesis prize. He has been a key member of the MCXVI architectural firm for many years. Dániel Hartvig has worked in several architectural studios and has had the opportunity to contribute to such major projects as the reconstruction of the Western Railway Station and the new Museum of Transport (pictured below). The pair have won three major calls in a row in recent years: the Mari Törőcsik memorial, the Vilma Bernovits memorial and the international call "Barcelona blind walls".
The award was designed by Csaba Bajusz, while the certificate is the work of Ákos Polgárdi. According to the idea of Csaba Bajusz, the award takes the mass of the Barn building in West Taghkanic, USA, designed by Bálint Nagy, as its starting point, and condenses its formal essence into a clean, abstract cube. The translucent upper part evokes the relationship between light and material, referring to the architect's way of thinking and the openness they represent, while the solid base is a symbol of professional and human integrity.
The costs of the award were financed by private donations from the academics of the Széchenyi Academy.
Rector's Office, Directorate of Communications
photo: Tamás Szigeti / MTA