Der Himmel Über Újpalota // 2022
“So, we couldn’t have each other over, but there was also nothing entertaining about hanging out between the high-rises when it was raining. We had to think of something. Something fun. Something that was totally against the rules. And then it hit us: We had the elevators. At first, the objective was just to annoy the other kids. We’d grab a kid, lock him in an elevator, and then push all the buttons. The other elevator we’d hold at the ground floor. Then the kid had to rattle all the way to the top, stopping on every floor. They did that to me a lot, too. Especially when I came back from a walk with my dog and had to be back on time for dinner. It would take forever to get to the eleventh floor, plus it made Ajax really nervous. It was even worse for the kids who had to pee. If they got pranked, then they’d usually end up having to pee in the elevator. But the worst thing of all was when it happened to a kid who had no wooden spoon (or whose wooden spoon had just been grabbed). All the little kids made sure to never go outside without our woo- den spoons because we could only reach all the elevator buttons with something that had a long handle. The easiest thing to grab and take along was a long-handled wooden cooking spoon out of your mom’s kitchen. Without such a wooden spoon, you were screwed. If you lost it or the other kids took it away, you had to trudge up flights of stairs. The other kids wouldn’t dare help you, and the grown-ups wouldn’t either because they thought that you just wanted to play with the elevator and break it. The elevators broke down a lot, and we weren’t entirely blameless there. We also liked to hold elevator races, because even though they went at the same speed, there were a few tricks you could use to shave a few seconds off your time. For one, the outer door had to be closed quickly but with a delicate touch— because if you slammed it too hard, it would bounce open again just a little. Also, the safety door closed automatically, but if you manually helped it along, it closed faster. Sometimes it also just broke. I was pretty good at racing the elevators.”
- Christiane F. (1978): Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo
The numerous educational institutions, kindergartens, schools and children’s homes located near the design site played a major role in the re-thinking of the building that previously served as a primary school. By designating two main traffic axes from the Main Square and the community center and creating an inner garden surrounded by a freely accessible atrium, I divided the building into two separate blocks. One was a sports center connected to a leisure park accessible from the Main Square, the main traffic hub, and a three-story residential block, in which I tried to coordinate smaller private residential units, community spaces and services reserved for residents, thereby creating a system that could provide suitable living conditions for young adults who had left state care. I wanted to include functions in the building that, on the one hand, would provide opportunities for community use of the area, without the need for consumption, and on the other hand, would reflect on the social problems of the area.