University students design street furniture for BudaPart - here are the winning concepts

Our newspaper has previously reported on the initiative, which aimed to create contemporary, aesthetic and functional street furniture concepts that fit in with the character of the BudaPart district and which will be featured in the BudaPart development project. The residential and office district in District XI is being developed by Property Market Kft. development and the Market Építő Zrt. general construction, and continues to expand.

On what basis did they decide?

The competition is open to students. The jury assessed the entries according to a wide range of criteria:

• the uniqueness, creativity and aesthetic quality of ideas,
• feasibility, manufacturability and cost-effectiveness,
• and how well the designed furniture harmonises with BudaPart's image, fits into the built environment, reflects contemporary design requirements and can be part of long-term sustainable urban development.

The judging also highlighted the material efficiency, the environmental factor and the functionality, user-friendliness and human-centredness of the street furniture elements.

Models of four street furniture sets were also presented

On 15 May, a ceremony was held at Market's headquarters to present the best pieces and to announce which three of the four sets of street furniture (bench, waste bin, plant holder and bike storage) were awarded medals by the jury and which won the online public vote.

The first place was won by Gergő Gajdács, the second place by Zita Júlia Martinek and the third place by Zsófia Tóth's furniture family, while the winner of the public vote was Emma Varga.

The top three winners of the competition were awarded a total of one million forints with prizes (500, 300 and 200 thousand forints respectively), while the winner of the public vote received a special prize (two passes to the MCC Fest and a unique PREbeton concrete tile).

Basic forms chosen

We were present at the event and had the opportunity to address the winners.

Gergő Gajdács, the creator of the first prize winning entry, said that the design considered three different directions, and the most important aspect was feasibility; "the aim was to achieve a clean and cost-effective result. Less was more was my guiding principle," he added.

"I had a lot of questions in my head, which is why I had three ideas running in parallel," he recalls. It's a great honour to win this competition early in my career, as I'm still in my first year at university."

Zita Júlia Martinek, the second prize winner, summed up her ideas to our magazine, "I started by getting an impression of the colours and character of the site. I was looking for a basic element that would fit in with the cubic forms and could be applied to any product.

An irregular rectangle became the basic shape of the products, which I also tried to design with the amount of material in mind."

"My aim," he says, "was to create furniture that was both beautiful and manufacturable. Perhaps the biggest challenge was to motivate myself, because this was the first project I had done outside of my studies, through my own hard work."

Tóth Zsófia reflected on the raster nature of the environment with her third prize-winning work: 'as an architecture student at university, I was recently introduced to the tools of parametric design. It was there that I came up with an idea for a street furniture, and then I saw the call for proposals. So I went to the site to see if my idea would fit in with its surroundings. I thought it might be worth submitting the design.

The BudaPart appears as a complex of buildings responding to the Danube in the subtle wavy lines, a motif that also weaves the range together."

The furniture is made of panels, and the gaps have significantly reduced the need for materials. "Before," he explains the difficulties, "I didn't design furniture, I didn't have to do this at university. The biggest difficulty, however, was the fact that I had to use a different program for furniture than the one I was used to using for architectural design.

Emma Varga, winner of the public vote, summed up her plan like this:

"The shapes of my furniture are inspired by rocks. My aim was to connect the property development on the Danube bank near the Kopaszi dam with nature."

"I was aiming for dark grey, matte furniture, created with few materials and minimal dimensions," he explains. And in concrete, almost all the elements are feasible, with just one or two metal accessories.

I'm studying to be a landscape architect, so it was interesting to get a glimpse into another world - and it was difficult to figure out how to model the pieces. My architect sister finally helped me with that. It was a great pleasure that the public chose my design.

The aim is to attract young people

The winning entries will be exhibited at the Market headquarters and can also be viewed at this link.

About the competition itself, AndrásWolf, Deputy Chief Technical Officer of Market Építő Zrt. said, "Market Csoport attaches great importance to the involvement of young talent and to the education of young people. We wanted to give students the opportunity to show their creativity in this special field of urban development."

In addition, PREbeton has also been asked to become actively involved in the design and production of street furniture, as there are few quality, innovative solutions on the domestic market, added the representative of Market.

As we have learned, they also asked for a set because they wanted to see street furniture with a coordinated design. This is also linked to the information that the jury was also particularly interested in the feasibility and manufacturability of the designs submitted, in line with the declared aim of making the entries into real products suitable for mass production.

Overall, the competition has been very well received by both universities and students, as demonstrated by the high number of registrations - more than 150 students from ten universities in Hungary.

It's worth following the Group's social media platforms for those who want to be informed about future opportunities like this and other Market Csoport talent management programmes.