Cultural, event and conference tourism is a well-established and economically significant sector. However, with its existing portfolio of venues, Budapest is currently unable to take full advantage of the opportunities it offers. The city lacks a high-quality, elegant and multifunctional conference and event centre of sufficient capacity, capable of accommodating up to 5,000 guests while also providing an appropriate setting for cultural programmes.

The Millennium City Centre, and in particular the immediate surroundings of Müpa Budapest—designed by ZDA—offers an exceptionally suitable location for such a facility due to its urban position, accessibility and existing infrastructure. The concept design explores how the new conference centre could be connected to the Müpa building while preserving the independent operation of both institutions and enabling them to function as a unified architectural and functional system during larger-scale events.

The proposed Event Centre and Müpa are conceived as complementary institutions. While Müpa is one of Hungary’s leading cultural venues, with a strong international profile, the new centre would provide the capacity required for large conferences, events and multifunctional programmes. By operating together, the two buildings could host national and international events for 4,000–5,000 participants, while major cultural festivals attracting large audiences could also make use of the spaces within the Event Centre.

This connection offers an efficient solution from an architectural, investment and operational perspective. In the long term, it would broaden the range of events that the two institutions are able to accommodate, improve the utilisation of their principal functional spaces and contribute to economically sustainable, continuous operation.

The main entrance of the Event Centre leads into a generous foyer providing spacious and flexibly configurable areas for conferences, events and associated programmes. A large open-air internal courtyard introduces natural daylight into the central foyer through expansive glazed surfaces, while openings in the floor slabs create visual connections between the different levels. The building thus combines well-organised event infrastructure with a representative public space of an urban scale.