Com-position of Architectural Metaphors, Empty Pareidolia. House of Music of Hungary in Budapest

Abstract

The opening of the House of Hungarian Music building (Sou Fujimoto Architects), not only provides Budapest with a unique work, but also provides the current architectural landscape with a particularly fertile speculation for diagnosing the present in both cultural and political terms. This building confronts the keys to modernity that are still in place, even though they were thought to be left behind, challenging the so-called Statute of Architecture. Demanding a greater commitment from those who practice a banal hermeneutic, we will argue that a simple formal comparison is further proof of the shortcomings of architectural criticism, it being unacceptable that this work should fall short of its greatest achievement: successfully re-centring current design clauses within a generalised dispersion and uncertainty. Architectural works that reveal their time are rare, and the risks taken in Fujimoto’s projects provide, perhaps not certainties, but reflective milestones.