The building at 6 Dorottya Street and 15 Apáczai Csere János Street, formerly known as Wurm Court, is one of the historically layered buildings of Budapest’s inner city. Opening onto three streets and organised around an enclosed courtyard, its street-facing wings are characterised by Classical architecture and rich sculptural detailing, while its internal structure also preserves traces of subsequent alterations.

Originally designed by Mihály Pollack as a Classical building comprising a ground floor and two upper storeys, it was repeatedly altered and extended throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The banking hall within the courtyard and its adjoining sequence of ceremonial spaces were designed by Alajos Hauszmann, meaning that the building preserves both Classical and turn-of-the-century Neo-Baroque architectural values. One of the principal aims of the design was to conserve and restore these surviving elements and integrate them into a new functional programme.

Building on the qualities of the protected historic structure, the client’s brief proposed the creation of traditionally styled luxury apartments, together with elegant retail and office spaces. However, the building’s original double-loaded plan and external gallery circulation could no longer be used economically or to an appropriate standard as an office building, hotel or residential property under contemporary functional requirements.

The concept therefore sought to revitalise the historic building by retaining the street-facing sections, the banking hall and the adjoining ground- and first-floor spaces, while allowing a new structure based on a house-within-a-house principle to be inserted in place of the courtyard wings. Embedded within this new internal structure, the reconstructed Hauszmann Hall serves as a representative central space connecting the building’s historic and contemporary layers.