Mom Park apartments give the city residents a taste of suburbia

Teampannon Architects and Engineers Ltd. - Budapest, Hungary

The project to design a combination of residential units, office space, and a shopping and entertainment center to provide a complete, comfortable living and working environment at the foot of the Buda hills brought suburbia to Budapest.

Back in 1997, selected to design the residential units of Mom Park, Tamás Noll, architect and his team of architects at Teampannon Architects and Engineers Kft began work initially with their existing software, AutoCAD^® 14. Realizing the benefits of designing based on the virtual building concept, using the 3D model and unified database, Teampannon invested in ArchiCAD 5.0. Converting their 2D AutoCAD data files to ArchiCAD, the six four-story buildings that would eventually comprise the residential sector of Mom Park became one of their first projects.

The 166 units of Mom Park's residential section backs up to a dense residential area in the northeast corner of the Park; the offices and mall were positioned on the main streets servicing the Park. "The design was made such that every apartment had a view of the Buda hills. This was coordinated with the placement of the business towers to the north of the residential area," Noll explained. With this design, and the large landscaped central garden, each resident receives a taste of the suburban atmosphere, inside the heart of Hungary's capital city.

The ability to visualize the buildings together throughout the development of the residential park was key to the decision to switch to ArchiCAD. Noll explained, "With the 3D window and different views of the model, we could show the client the view from the terraces as well as the interiors."

Though there are nine basic floor plan types ranging from 46 to 228 sq. meters, Noll disclosed that in reality there are more than 60 floor plan types. "We wanted to make each apartment a little different, to give them an individual feel; we did this by moving the interior walls, or extending the balcony for instance." Nevertheless certain other rooms and spaces - for instance bathroom types - remained unchanged over the similar units. ArchiCAD's Hot Linked Modules functionality was the perfect tool to insert the necessary elements and rooms to their exact location. The constant updates of all these elements were also ensured since only one single source file had to be modified for all the insertion points in the host project to be updated immediately and automatically.

Not only ArchiCAD's 3D modeling capabilities were behind the decision to switch software. The efficiency inherent in working with a single unified database was also fundamental to the decision. "Working with one file, where sections are updated automatically improves work efficiency. We used one file for each building which eliminated the complication of working with multiple files in AutoCAD," Noll relayed.

Other important issue for Teampannon is ArchiCAD's DWG Export/Import functionality. Noll explained, "Since we used AutoCAD earlier and our consulting building engineers are still using Autodesk products, it is still very important for us to ensure smooth information and data flow with our partners. When we designed Mom Park we were working in ArchiCAD 5.0 and did have a couple of problems exchanging files then. Fortunately, (Graphisoft) improved this in the later versions. We're using 7.0 now and with ProjectXChange we can give our consultants what they need in a couple of clicks without worrying about translation issues."

Finally, ArchiCAD, also provided a quick and easy solution to demands for early marketing material from the developers. With ArchiCAD Noll could create high quality renderings from an early stage that were used in making various promotional materials about the Park.

"ArchiCAD not only helped improve efficiency in the design of the process, but made it easier to present the design to the client in a far more useful format than 2D CAD programs can do, enhance our communication with the partner offices, but the most important all - it gave back the fun and pleasure of architectural design development, that had been lost in our work."