View of the Buda Castle District - Müller Drogéria Magyarország Bt. builds apartments with stunning panoramic views on the site of the former Fontana House

In just under 1.5 years, the SWIETELSKY Magyarország Kft. building, which will house 8,500 square metres of shops and apartments on Váci Street in Budapest, will be completed in just under 1.5 years. The investor behind the project, which is being built on the corner of Váci Street and Régi Posta Street, is the Hungarian subsidiary of Müller, a German company that operates more than 750 drugstores across Europe. The company's website and read about their plans to create an attractive store and apartments on this impressive street in Budapest's old town, with views of the Danube and the Buda Castle District, a World Heritage Site.

Shops and apartments built on the site of the Fontana House

The project was previously the site of the Fontana Fashion House, which opened in 1984. Before the fall of communism, the shops here sold lingerie that was a speciality in Hungary and made in Western Europe.

After the demolition of the eight-storey shopping centre, 3,000 square metres of retail space will be built above two levels of underground parking - where Müller's new store will open. The large rental apartments, 40 in total, will be located on floors 2-7,

Nine floors completed in fourteen months

SWIETELSKY Magyarország Kft. will complete the reinforced concrete structure of the building by the end of March. The company's experts will also carry out civil engineering and structural engineering works, Cserneczky Zsolt told our portal. The project manager said that the preparatory work phases - including the design of the working area, the foundation and installation of the tower's core - started in November 2022.

The two-storey underground car park was constructed with base slabs on each level and reinforced concrete surfaces with water migration prevention and waterproofing. The project manager added that the work then continued with the construction of the ground floor and five additional floors. By the March deadline, the sixth floor slab and the top floor were still to be constructed.

Parts of the Fonata House staircase have been used

The project includes a number of interesting solutions, with the new building's mechanical tower being built in the remaining reinforced concrete staircase of the former Fontana House. When the building was demolished, the reinforced concrete walls surrounding the entrance to the former building were retained and anchored to the adjacent hotel wall with a steel structure for stability. The connection between the hotel and the new adjacent building, which will house a new store and apartments, was made using precast reinforced concrete parapet walls.   

Tight schedule: structural work is still ongoing on the upper floors, while the ground floor is already being painted

Due to the tight schedule, the construction schedule was designed to

while structural work is still ongoing on the upper floors, on the lower floors painters and tilers are already working on the interiors. Zsolt Cserneczky said.

While the structural work was still being carried out on the second floor, the glass façade and the escalators were already installed on the first floor. At the same time as the waterproofing of the slab above the first floor, the future drugstore shop was being tiled, plastered and painted by the contractors.

A logistical feat: the continuous supply of materials to the construction site was managed through a crowded pedestrian street

In addition to the tight deadline, the contractor's situation is complicated by the fact that the construction is taking place in a busy pedestrian street in the city centre. This also poses a number of challenges for SWIETELSKY Magyarország Kft.'s professionals. In a confined area and on a street with a constant flow of tourists, the construction site needs to ensure a steady supply of building materials. In addition, there is limited space available for both loading and on-site storage.

These conditions require much more precise logistics than usual from the contractor. The formwork materials, concrete and reinforcing steel needed for a particular phase of the work must arrive on site like clockwork. Additional attention is required when several contractors are present on the site at the same time and space has to be provided for them. This requires a great deal of coordination and planning.

The elements are assembled at an external site

In addition to the tight timeframe and staging area, the complexity and complexity of the building's structure is a challenge. The façade is connected by prefabricated curved and straight reinforced concrete cornice elements. In the inner courtyard, two-metre wide precast reinforced concrete corridors are constructed to provide access to the apartments, connected to the slab by a thermal bridge element.

In order to avoid the difficulties of on-site material storage and continuous packing, the contractor has chosen to preassemble the reinforced concrete pillars required for the construction phase at an off-site site, from where the finished reinforcing steel is transported by trucks to the site.

The construction process started in January 2023 and will be completed in March this year.