ZÓNA MSc diploma project 2016

architect: Bettina Barna

architectural consultant: Péter Kovács DLA

I remember my whole childhood was about bunkers. I loved hiding from my teachers, my parents, my friends, and even my siblings. The difficulty was to keep the secret about where and how I could manage to be invisible so long. Two years ago, my diploma project was titled the Zone, and during the long research work we could not find a better term for the place that has no place in our present world. Hundreds of forgotten, abandoned barracks and military operation centers’ ruins remained in our country. We found a nuclear bunker near Pécel on the hilltop that only few people know about. We excitedly began to secretly investigate and uncover the liquidated Soviet military base in Pécel during the Cold War, which once hid a nuclear missile silo underground. Did you find it too?

The Zone is located on a hilltop with a good view of the surrounding cities and Budapest. It is 2-3 air km from any inhabited area. The electricity poles have been there ever since. Concrete water reservoirs, cable trenches, pools, manholes, building remains, fountains, concrete benches. Exterior buildings of demolished barracks, control center, officer’s accommodation, garage, assembly workshop, sauna, missile launchers, anti-aircraft hangars, missile silo contour. In the middle of the Zone there is a 15-meter-high, two-story protected control point (radar control center), hidden in a hill, organically connected to a (demolished) concrete missile silo (for the underground storage of a 25-meter nuclear missile according to sources), with an assembly shaft and a geodesic tower.

http://epiteszforum.hu/zona-az-ember-utani-vilag-tereinek-vizioja