A Hellow Wood project inpired by fossils
The Hello Wood architecture and educational platform organised its workshop in Csopak for the fourth time this summer with student and professor teams from Hungarian design and architecture universities. The workshop was supported by the local government of Csopak, a village near Lake Balaton, located within the Bakony–Balaton UNESCO Global Geopark. The teams designed and built nine installations in the village. The workshop is a unique experience where people with different cultural and professional background and from different generations work together. The wooden installations serve the residents and visitors for long years according to plan and visually enrich the village.
The team of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics designed and built one of the installations, located in the park of the Balaton-felvidéki National Park Directorate, near the Dormouse Circuit. It is called ’Ammoniterrace’ as it remebles to an ammonite and at the same time offers a possibility to have a rest on it.
The Bakony–Balaton UNESCO Global Geopark, founded by the national park directorate, is an area exceedingly rich in ammonite fossils, also by international standards. The shape of the wooden structure recalls the negative imprint of the fossilized, spiral like house of the ancient marine animal. We can also discover the Fibonacci Spiral in this shape, present in nature in many places.
Ammonites, these cephalopods with calcareous shell lived in high numbers in Mezozoic seas. They became extinct 66 million years ago, at the same time as dinosaurs. The fossils – well preserved, thanks to the outer calcareous shell – resemble snails at first sight, although in fact their living relatives are nautiluses, octopuses and squids.
Visit: the installation can be visited during the opening hours of the park of the directorate:
Csopak, Kossuth u. 16., Monday–Thursday:: 7:30 am – 4:00 pm, Friday: 7:30 am – 13:30 pm.
Design and building: teachers and students of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Team leaders: Márton Nagy, Péter Lassu, Tibor Pálóczi
Team: Fruzsina Ács, Zsófia Berczi, Blanka Gáspárdy, Detti Kolossváry, Simon Kőszegi, Dóra Nagy, Csaba Pintér, Zsófia Sörényi, Zsófi Telek
The other eight installations can be visited in the village (map, universities).
Short videofilms about the workshop and the building of the Ammoniterrace:
Video about installing the Ammoniterrace.
The 'Ammoniterrace' appeared on the cover of the Építész Közlöny, a Hungarian Architecture Magazine.
