A polarising project by the government of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, to transform the historic City Park here into a museum district has produced its first building: the House of Music, Hungary.
Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the cultural centre, which opened January 23, offers exhibitions, education and concerts. An interactive permanent show guides visitors through the historical development of Western music; celebrates the contribution of Hungarian composers such as Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly; and traces Hungary’s folk music tradition to its Central Asian roots. One room, painted in the colours of the Hungarian flag, features video displays on the country’s political history and famous athletes, with the national anthem as a soundtrack.
Yet beyond the House of Music’s glass walls, which are animated by reflections of construction elsewhere in the park, this new building is mired in controversy.
Critics have said that the government’s plans to develop the 200-year-old City Park into a museum district disturbs the natural environment, deprives locals of much-needed public space and raises concerns about corruption. But those behind the project say that the site has always been more than a public park and that the undertaking is Europe’s largest urban development project. In a speech, Orban described the transformation as an “unfinished work of art.” In 2012, Orban’s government announced an ambitious plan to transform the park, in disrepair after decades of neglect, into a district of five museums. The estimated cost at the time was about $250 million, but that had ballooned to nearly five times the original projections by 2017.
There had been a virtual consensus that the park needed work, but the government and park conservationists disagreed about the fate of the park’s natural features.
A special legal designation allowed the project to skirt existing development rules, meaning the municipality of Budapest had little say over the government’s plans. And legislation adopted by Orban’s party placed the park under the purview of a newly created, state-owned company controlled by his allies. Sandor Lederer of K-Monitor, an anti-corruption watchdog, said public records indicate the House of Music alone had cost Hungarian taxpayers as much as $100 million.
“The project is a good example of how public investments work under Orban’’, Lederer said. “There are no real needs and impact assessments done; citizens and affected parties are excluded from consultations and planning.”
He said poor planning and corruption have benefited companies widely seen as Orban’s clientele, saying, “Not only present, but also future generations, will pay the costs of another Orban pet project.”
Laszlo Baan, the government commissioner overseeing the project, declined to be interviewed, but a spokesperson said in a statement that the government had so far spent 250 billion Hungarian forints, about $800 million, on the project. Fujimoto’s office did not respond to an interview request.
In 2016, private security guards clashed with park conservationists at the future site of the House of Music. Gergely Karacsony, an opposition politician who was elected mayor of Budapest in 2019, did not attend the House of Music’s January 22 unveiling, which took place on the Day of Hungarian Culture, a national celebration. The building, he wrote on social media, was born not of culture but of violence.
In a radio interview, Karacsony recently likened construction in a public park to urinating in a stoup of holy water: “You can do it, but it ruins why we are all there.”
“The Hungarian nation never forgets the names of those who built the country’’, Orban said in a speech at the ceremony, adding that detractors are not remembered, “because the Hungarian nation simply casts them out of its memory.”
—The New York Times
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