Office · Buda Castle, Budapest · 2024

A thousand workplaces inside a rebuilt monument

The interior design of the former Royal Hungarian Ministry of Finance on Szentháromság tér. Sándor Fellner's neo-Gothic palace, completed in 1904, was badly damaged in the Second World War; its reconstruction was completed in 2024.

The brief

The palace was among the most ornate houses of millennial Budapest: carved stone, a coloured tiled roof, turrets. It burned out in the war, the roof and turrets were lost, and for decades the building stood truncated and altered.

The reconstruction returned the exterior — project figures give 8,700 carved stone elements and 2,366 m² of glazed roof — and office use moved into some 30,000 m² of the complex, with capacity for a thousand people.

The interior task followed from that: to place a contemporary working office inside a rebuilt monument without either pretending to be the other. The historic envelope is fixed; the office standard has to be achieved within it.

Our design area covered blocks B, C, D, E, F and K, in every detail.

The answer

The new layer stays visibly new. No historicist furniture, no imitated ornament: the fit-out is white and restrained, and the character is carried by the stone, the vaulting and the restored detail.

The volume standing in the roofed courtyard is clad in perforated white metal. The pattern is not ornament but geometry: it starts from Modulus, the proportional system of the painter Zoltán Krizsán — the shared construction logic behind Gothic tracery and traditional pattern sets — which the architects mapped onto Fellner's facade and reworked into the drawing for the cladding. The pattern therefore belongs to the building while the structure is plainly of today. During the day the panel casts the facade pattern as shadow along the corridors; the carpet pattern carries it further.

The offices are cellular, with glazed partitions. The courtyard rooflight and the internal glazing together bring daylight to the corridors, so the inner bands of these large floorplates do not go dark.

A line drawing of the facade's Gothic openings runs across the tea-point walls. In an office building these are the few square metres where people stop to talk — which makes it the most useful place to show what building they are working in.

The sanitary blocks are in dark stone with a backlit mirror band, so that after the white office floors there is one space of opposite material.

What it took

In a listed building, interior design does not draw between walls but into the space the existing structure allows. Opening positions, floor-to-floor heights and available ceiling void are all givens — mechanical and electrical routes have to follow them, and they bound the room layout too.

The other constraint is scale. At a thousand workplaces, a detail is not built once but several hundred times. A corridor door junction, a glazed partition module or a ceiling band only works if it is repeatable, manufacturable and tolerant of site deviation.

At this scale, schedules and junction details are not a formality: they are what holds the project together.

Data

Location: Szentháromság tér, Buda Castle, Budapest
The building: Former Royal Hungarian Ministry of Finance, Sándor Fellner, 1904
Year: 2024
Type: Heritage reconstruction, office interior design
The complex: c. 30,000 m², capacity for 1,000
Design area: Blocks B, C, D, E, F and K, full interior design
Interior design: András Krizbai, Márta Tiszai-Mussó
Contractor: West Hungária Bau Kft.
Reconstruction: Concept and permit design: Sándor Makrai DLA, Ádám Vesztergom
Pattern system: Modulus — Zoltán Krizsán, painter (krizsan.art)
Photography: Tamás Bujnovszky
Published: Octogon 198 · 2025/2
Status: Completed

Archive black-and-white photograph of the palace burned out in the war: roof lost, facade damaged, rubble around the Holy Trinity column — 1945: the roof and the turrets were lost. Archive photograph, Fortepan.

The restored neo-Gothic palace on Szentháromság tér: carved stone facade, patterned tiled roof, two turrets — 2024: the exterior rebuilt, in carved stone and coloured tile.

The roofed courtyard seen from below: a volume clad in perforated white metal, glazed roof structure, bridges between levels — The volume standing in the roofed courtyard is clad in perforated white metal.

Corridor along the perforated metal wall: the tracery pattern of the panel close up, the restored facade behind it — The perforation starts from the Modulus geometry and, through it, from the building's own Gothic tracery.

Cellular office in the completed building: white furniture, green seat pads, full-height glazing onto the planted courtyard — Cellular offices, full-height glazing towards the courtyard.

The Modulus proportional system: a black-and-white square with a constructed web of arcs and lines, Gothic tracery on one half, a traditional pattern set on the other — Modulus — a proportional system for interior design, the geometry shared by Gothic and traditional pattern sets. By the painter Zoltán Krizsán.

Four construction drawings: Fellner facade mapped onto the Modulus web, with proportions and arcs marked — The system mapped onto Fellner's facade: opening rhythm and massing read from the same construction.

Construction sheets: line drawing of the Fellner facade, central and inverted perspective diagrams, the Modulus and inverted Modulus webs — Modulus and inverted Modulus. The drawing for the perforated panel came out of this web.

Tea point visualisation: white run of units, coffee machine, a line drawing of the facade Gothic openings on the opposite wall — A line drawing of the facade's openings runs across the tea-point wall.

Office corridor visualisation: perforated ceiling band, concealed light lines, glazed partitions, brass door reveals — Repeatable details: door junction, partition module, ceiling band.

Meeting room visualisation: long white table, teal upholstered chairs, wall screen, glazed wall to the corridor — A meeting room in the facade bay.

Meeting room visualisation with green upholstered chairs, white table, glazed door and windows onto the trees — The same system, another block.

Small office visualisation: desk, green acoustic panel, four-seat meeting table, glazed partition — A cellular office with a meeting table.

Office visualisation with a glazed partition onto the courtyard atrium, white storage run and green upholstered chairs — The glazed partitions carry daylight through to the corridor.

Sanitary block visualisation: dark stone cladding, backlit mirror band, two integrated basins — The dark stone of the sanitary blocks counterpoints the white office floors.

Planted inner courtyard in winter snow: pines and shrubs, glazed office facades with lit offices all around — The planted courtyard: the inner bands of each floor take their light from here.

Photography: Tamás Bujnovszky · Modulus diagrams by Zoltán Krizsán · meeting rooms, tea point and sanitary block shown as design visualisations · the 1945 view is archive (Fortepan)

Ren Design is a Budapest interior design studio that has worked across Europe, the Gulf and South America. On this project it designed the full office interior of blocks B, C, D, E, F and K, from concept through construction documentation and schedules. The reconstruction and the completed interiors were published by Octogon (issue 198, 2025/2) — text by dr. Viola Pleskovics, photography by Tamás Bujnovszky.