Kecskemét's new café awaits its guests for a "coffee in peace"

One of the most famous buildings designed by Gyula Pártos and Ödön Lechner, a symbol of Hungarian Art Nouveau, has been home to the city's leaders since 1895. Despite the vicissitudes of the past 130 years, its character and individuality have remained intact, but its condition has deteriorated significantly in recent years. Fortunately, the city's leadership has recently found a way to save the building: with the help of the Modern Cities Programme and the work of Horváth Építőmester Zrt. (HÉP), the Town Hall has been completely renovated and reopen its doors this year, complete with a café designed by architect and interior designer Ervin Vass-Eysen, after which it is named.

Ornament of Kecskemét

The two-storey, free-standing main façade, accentuated by a central colonnade, is decorated with Zsolna ceramics, as is the northeast corner colonnade, which also defines the weight of the Town Hall building. Below it, from Kossuth Square, the Lechner Café was opened, in which the designers took advantage of the generosity of the octagonal, octagonal roofing of the two corner former shop spaces with their chintzy cross vaults. The dark wood furnishings and muted colours were used to give the space a turn-of-the-century feel. In keeping with the name of Ödön Lechner, the design is modern, Hungarian and quality.

Reminiscent of the Lechner era

A two-storey high octagonal room serves as an internal consumer space, with a courtyard, kitchen, service and utility areas. The large room, measuring approximately 13 x 6 metres, is connected to the northern courtyard via a walkway and to the internal walkway of the Town Hall via another walkway.

Back in the old Hungarian café tradition, Lechner Café offers more than just quality Italian coffee: in addition to croissants, baguettes, Hungarian and Anglo-Saxon egg dishes, you can also enjoy hot main courses, freshly draughted prosecco and other drink specialities.

The café can also be a nice addition to the weddings held in the Town Hall banqueting hall, adding to the recently opened interactive visitor centre, the banqueting courtyard which provides a beautiful setting for concerts and other performances, and the banqueting hall which is a beautiful venue for weddings, and further enhancing the community functions of the renovated Town Hall.

The structure of its accessible spaces consists of three units, the most important of which, the octagonal space with a corner entrance facing the Great Church, is the Lechner Café's reception area with a bar. This is perhaps where the designer's intentions are most clearly evident, focusing on the nostalgia of the iconic City Hall building: the windows are based on the original Lechner designs, which adds significantly to the experience of the space; but the cold tiling is also formed by sand-coloured and blue small-cube inlays that match the flooring of the City Hall corridors, but do not imitate it. The oiled Swedish flooring in the restaurant area and the solid wood furniture, as well as the wall paintings that highlight the edges of the shops, all serve to make anyone entering the building feel like they are entering the heyday of bourgeois culture in Lechner's time, when they come in for a 'peace' coffee.