House of Terror Museum, Budapest, Hungary, 2002.
Client: Hungarian Government.
Designer: Attila F Kovacs. Photographer: Janos Szentivani, Attila F. Kovacs. Additional: Architekton RT.
Materials: Metal Frame Resopal Covering.
The House of Terror Museum building, one in a row of ordinary nineteenth-century apartment buildings, was the headquarters of the national socialist Arrow Cross Party (which murdered hundreds of Jews during World War II), and afterward it was the headquarters of the feared ÁVO (State Security Department). During the time it belonged to the Arrow Cross, there hung a huge banner with pictures of Hitler and Il Duce. When ÁVO took over the building, the windowpanes were covered which thick white paint or tinplates. Now the museum is a monument to the victims of terror—the facade was painted monochrome gray, and the windowpanes were changed for nontransparent matte glass. The original architectural structure was kept with a black passe-partout
added, composed by the new massive molding, which emphasizes its historical relevance. These massive black blade walls are huge black flags of mourning. When the sun is at its highest, the building is covered in a big shadow, referring, says Attila F. Kovács, to Arthur Koesler’s key novel “Darkness at Noon.” The logo of the museum and the letters of “TERROR” cast different shadows throughout the day.
