Reziduum—Frequency of Architecture

The project Reziduum—The Frequency of Architecture has been chosen to represent Hungary at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. The starting point of the project, curated by Mária Kondor-Szilágyi, is the new building of the Museum of Ethnography, designed by architect Marcel Ferencz (Napur Architect). The building was completed in 2022 as a part of Liget Budapest Project, Europe’s largest and most ambitious urban cultural development which envisions the complete renewal of Budapest's largest and most iconic public park. 

One of the most important elements of the new building is the external decorative lattice, which was designed by architect. The patterns from the traditions of the various peoples preserved in the museum have been simplified to the most elementary forms. The result is a lattice metal grid of around half a million pixels that runs along the façade of the building. The ornamentation is a weaving of Hungarian and universal culture and symbolises the rich collection of the 150 years old Museum of Ethnography. It is featured on the whole façade of the building and some of these elements will be exhibited in Venice under special laser lighting.

“When designing the Reziduum project, our primary question was how to build an exhibition that would present a specific building, its ornamentation, and its collection at the same time, meanwhile incorporating the light and sound effects generated by the ornamentation symbolizing cultural memory. From the outset, we approached the project with a kind of all-artistic attitude; keeping it open to the birth of new works of art resulting from further contemplating the concept, and thus we not merely give voice to the new building of the Museum of Ethnography, but also 'converse' with it, creating a dialogue.” (Mária Kondor-Szilágyi)

The music is present as an object in the form of a new contemporary instrument—the Soundcylinder, designed by architect and composer Péter Mátrai‚which rhymes with the idea of the circle evoked by the Museum and also as a musical motif, which presents an audible relationship between the building and music.

The most crucial contribution of the Reziduum project is to point out that the relics of the past are not only museum objects but can also trigger reflection and contemplation; thinking about such objects is thus both an intellectual and an emotional experience, which remains in the collection of the “inner museum” of the contemplative thinker.

The participants of the exhibition project: Marcel Ferencz (lead designer of the building, Napur Architect), Ferenc Haász, light designer, Judit Z. Halmágyi, architect, Péter Mátrai, architect and composer.

National commissioner: Julia Fabényi
Curator: Mária Kondor-Szilágyi
Organizer: Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art. Budapest
Press contact: Gabriella Rothman, rothman.gabriella@ludwigmuseum.hu