Liszt Academy Wins Two Awards at FIABCI Prix d’Excellence Competition

The Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music won the silver medal in the Heritage (Restoration/Conservation) category and the Purpose Built category of the global competition. Another successful project from Hungary, the Eiffel Palace Office Building by Horizon Development Ltd. received the silver award in the categories of Sustainable Development and Heritage.

Founded in 1948, the Paris-based International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) started the annual FIABCI Prix d’ Excellence Awards in 1992, which is considered as the most prestigious international award in property development ever since. This year the jury was composed of 68 experts from 28 countries, representing the various branches of real estate development. By tradition, the jury announces the World Gold Winners and World Silver Winners in 13-14 categories. As FIABCI Malaysia President Yeow Thit Sang put it at the Awards Presentation Ceremony, “the award of excellence is given to the best among the best.”

On the part of the Liszt Academy, the trophies were collected by Gergely Lakatos, chief engineer of the Liszt Academy and coordinator of the reconstruction project. “It is a great honor and privilege for me as a Hungarian to have received this distinguished international award, all the more so, as our project came out as one of only three winners from Europe. The participants of the competition represented the world’s entire real estate profession, and the prestige of the awards is also demonstrated by the fact that they were presented by the King of Malaysia himself,” said Gergely Lakatos to MTI at the awarding ceremony on Saturday. The chief engineer emphasized that the FIABCI awards can be regarded as the crowning moment of a ten-year-long project, and the recognition of the efforts of nearly 100 professionals who conducted the reconstruction works.

“This recognition is the triumph of Hungarian architecture and all of the professions involved in the complex renovation process,” András Batta, former President of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and one of the visionaries and most active promoters of the project, told MTI, adding that the illustrious awards go, in fact, to those hundreds of people who worked on the overall reconstruction of the Liszt Academy, from the architects and restorers to the various subject matter experts. András Batta also underlined the key roles of project manager László Csepeli and architects Éva Magyari, Béla Pazár and Ferenc Potzner. Seizing a historic opportunity and working for many years afterwards, the renovation, he said, was completed so successfully that in the end all of their dreams and desires could be realized: besides the Academy’s main building on Liszt Ferenc Square, a new building in Wesselényi Street was also restored.
 

Photo by Krisztián Bódis / We Love Budapest
 

The Hungarian participants of the international competition in 2015 were the winners of the 16^th FIABCI Hungary Prix d’Excellence Awards organized by the Hungarian Chapter of the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) jointly with the Hungarian Real Estate Association. In the 2013 global competition the renovation of the Pauline-Carmelite Monastery of Sopronbánfalva and the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter rehabilitation project were awarded the silver medal, while in 2014 the reconstruction of the Royal Palace of Gödöllő and the Green House office building came out as World Gold Winners and the “Hagymatikum” thermal bath in Makó received silver award.

The reconstruction of the main building of the Liszt Academy began in August 2011 with the aim of not only restoring the architectural monument to its original splendor based on the contemporary plans, descriptions and photographs but also to enable high-standard musical education and concert life within its walls. Renewed from the basement to the loft, the building provides accessibility for people with disabilities, and its interior space has been expanded by 3,000 m² through the complete conversion of the basement level and the attic and the covering of the courtyard. The renewed building was opened on 22 October 2013. But the project officially titled “Liszt Ferenc’s Academy of Music – the renewed centre of European higher music education in Budapest”, which was co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund with the support of the Hungarian Government comprised not only the music palace on Liszt Ferenc Square: a new building in Wesselényi Street dedicated to the tuition of the university’s students was refurbished and added to the Liszt Academy in 2011. The overall renovation project cost approximately 13.2 billion HUF, 90% of which was financed by the European Union.

With the two FIABCI awards, the reconstruction of the Liszt Academy has received international recognition for the second time already in a couple of month: as we reported earlier, in April 2015 the project has won the Europa Nostra Award in the conservation of cultural heritage category. The awards ceremony will take place in Oslo on 11 June 2015.

MTI /zenaakademia.hu