DUTCH ARCHITECT TO RENEW CENTRAL BUDAPEST; UNIVERSITY OF IOWA RESTORES BUILDING

Budapest’s mayor, Gábor Demszky, announced on October 31 that Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat submitted the winning plan to make the area of central Budapest near Városháza Park “friendlier, more usable, and versatile.” Van Egeraat won over seventy-four thousand dollars, and the Budapest government will sign a contract with him early next year. Construction is expected to start in 2011. The area comprising the building and the parking lot of the mayor’s office, Városháza Park, Merlin Theater, and the downtown fire department will change considerably. The town hall will be renovated, and a new building complex established on the 430,000-square-foot area that currently remains unused. Renderings of the winning plan can be found here.

In other news, the University of Iowa will restore a flood-damaged art building, saying the need for space outweighs the risk that the Iowa River will again flood the building before protection can be put in place, reports the Des Moines Register. The Art Building West, a $21.5 million building, sustained $12 million in damage during June’s record floods. The university’s flood-mitigation task force recommended that the building be restored because of the space needs of the art and art-history programs. The university’s president, Sally Mason, approved the project, estimated to cost five million dollars. The Art Building West will be reopened by December 2009. The university will also start restoring the south end of the former Museum of Art as temporary quarters for displaced art programs. The museum will never again hold the university’s art collection, which includes Jackson Pollock’s Mural, valued at more than one hundred million dollars.