Ecology and sound at the House of Hungarian Music

In the heart of the Varosliget Park in Pest, the main green area of Budapest, beneath the canopy of the bicentennial trees, stands a modern dream building that blends in with the greenery of the lungs of the Hungarian capital.

It is the House of Hungarian Music, also known as "The Palace of Musical Miracles", an ecological architectural proposal that is part of Liget Budapest, the largest and most ambitious urban cultural project in Europe with the rehabilitation of the park respecting the heritage value of what is considered one of the oldest city parks in the world.

The renovation consists of ecological and environmentally friendly facilities to offer complete leisure and cultural experiences in which the whole museum dedicated to music is the central piece.

The Liget Budapest project, which is being followed by industry professionals for its unique features, is expected to open its doors to music lovers by the end of 2021.

The 9,000 square metre building is based on a design by Japanese star architect Sou Fujimoto, who has created an exciting symbiosis between the natural and man-made environment in the picturesque surroundings of the City Park lake.

This grand music forum offers traditional live music venues and features an open-air stage and an underground floor that will house a huge, ultra-modern, permanent, and temporary interactive music exhibition.

The unique 'sound dome' of this architectural marvel has been carefully designed to provide the nuances of sound and its projection in the different spaces that such a musical landmark required.

The use of URSA's absorbent mineral wool insulation has played a key role in this enormous dome of unique design. The peculiar floating roof, below the treetops, plays with a wavy design of varying thicknesses that gives the building a unique and surprising character.

The BREEAM building rating system has considered both the building and the site as exemplary in terms of environmental performance for a building that uses renewable energy sources and special cooling and heating systems and succeeds in reconnecting thousands of square metres of green space with the city's urban park.

In 2019, the House of Hungarian Music won the Best International Public Building award and the Best European Public Building award at the International Property Awards. The Hungarian House of Music has won the World's Best Use of Music in Property Development at the American Music Cities Awards, one of the world's most professional music and trade award ceremonies in September 2020.

For the unique hemispherical dome, the acoustic designer chose an insulation material that represents 21st-century quality and can be counted on to deliver consistently high performance over the long term with an optimum level of sustainability.

Since the excellent sound absorption of URSA FDP2 Vr mineral wool had to be guaranteed at all required frequencies, URSA illustrated the sound absorption curves of the 5 and 10 cm thick products for the acoustic design.

The URSA mineral wool slabs, consisting of long, thin, flexible elementary fibres, also have water-repellent properties to meet the latest requirements, are vapour permeable, and have excellent fire safety properties, being classified as A1, i.e. non-combustible.

The building façade consists of a series of 94 large, individually fabricated insulating glass panels without horizontal structural divisions, each measuring almost 12 metres in some sections.

The URSA mineral cotton fibre (glass) panels, installed in a considerable thickness of 35-40 cm and covered with a black glass veil, guarantee excellent acoustic absorption of the dome structure, even in the low sound range. The material, ideal both for the structure of the fibres and for the density of the body, is placed in the centre of the supporting metal ribs and the sides of the ribs are also covered with sound-absorbing material in a thickness of 5 cm.

Some data:

AREA: 9 000 m2

ARCHITECT: Sou Fujimoto - M-Teampannon

LOCATION: Varosliget Park, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY.

IMPLEMENTATION: Magyar Építő

MATERIALS USED:

• URSA FDP2 Vr mineral wool.
• 35-40 cm URSA mineral (glass) cotton fibre panels covered with a black glass veil.
• 5CM sound-absorbing material

Fotó: Mohai Balázs and Sou Fujimoto Architects