It is quite rare that an engineer receives an order to design the building of a museum. We do get orders for renewal, remod­el­ling every once in a while, but we can rarely enjoy an order for the design of a new memorial place that does not exist yet. It was one of the reasons why Artrea Consulting Kft. treated the building complex of the House of Fates as an inter­esting chal­lenge. Its special scenery-like appear­ance, the char­ac­ter­istics of the building and the multi­tude of memor­ab­ilia and histor­ical mater­ials made the lives of the special­ized designers more diffi­cult, including those of the elec­tri­city designers.

Owing to the char­ac­ter­istics of the building, energy supply had to be kept outside, thus both the trans­former and the main distri­bu­tion unit were placed outdoors. Each of the three build­ings oper­ates on its own, with its own power network. The only connec­tion among the build­ings is the main distrib­utor mentioned above and the “nervous system” of our time, the computer network.

A new tech­no­logy had to be invented for the archi­tec­tural layout involving a concrete slab without a suspended ceiling or any other type of coverage, at the same time, the loca­tion of the connec­tions only became known in the last stage of the construc­tion of the building. We managed to resolve this seem­ingly impossible situ­ation by designing a pipe network based on a certain logic, which the construc­tion contractor installed prior to concrete casting, enabling us, with a small exag­ger­a­tion in retro­spect, to install public utility infra­struc­ture connec­tions on prac­tic­ally any point of the building.

As in every museum, here, too, lighting is a very important part of the exhib­i­tion. For a large part we used LED sources of lighting and intel­li­gent control, explored special lumin­aires and solu­tions. The end result is a really spec­tac­ular, impressive interior.

Modern museums are no longer (simple) collec­tions, places where objects are stored. Often they retain memories, use the tools of virtual reality to place the visitor in the age depicted by the exhib­i­tion. This happens in the building of the House of Fates as well — the computing and audi­ovisual tech­no­lo­gical systems of the House also had to be designed. The end result of all modern know­ledge and oppor­tun­ities is cabling and cabling, and even more cabling. It has been said by many that the building is held together by our cables — and since we incor­por­ated “several tens of kilo­metres” in the building, this could actu­ally be true…

The elec­tri­city-related issue of the building that was discussed the most was the seem­ingly simple affair of light­ning protec­tion. The mesh welded from rein­force­ment steel and installed between the façades and roofs of the two extreme build­ings (we just called it the cage…) served as both a collec­tion and touch-off device, but since it can be touched, profes­sional debates developed around it. By the end of the project we had eight special­ized engin­eers dealing with this issue — finally returning to the solu­tion that had been the starting point. Never­the­less, everyone learned a lot from what happened.

In retro­spect, we have completed a memor­able design order. We were part of a creative team and erected a building that will continue to remind the gener­a­tions of the future for a long time to come of the Holo­caust, one of the low points of human­kind and


Zoltán Üveges

Facts and numbers

  • Our client: FBIS archi­tects
  • Archi­tec­ture: Attila F. Kovács , FBIS archi­tects
  • Area: 12000 m2
  • Year of design: 2013