Spa Tokaj

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, 1994

Tokaj – a plan for a new town in Hungary to be attached to a film production studio - is to be a town of pleasure and health. Its workplaces are the thermal spa, casino, hotel, medical facilities, concert and theater center, parks, lm studios and academy, and cinema museum. This extraordinary program of leisure is to be supported by a rich apparatus of normalcy. The town – as any new town should be – is at once prototypical and practical, fantastical and exigent.

The center of Tokaj – bounded by a sinewy canal – is to be car-free and linked to Budapest by a light-rail connection. Vehicular traffic would circulate at the town’s perimeter on a ring road that feed parking lots and service tunnels. Tokaj is to be expanded in two phases to a radius of 1,500 meters. At build-out, the town would include two additional neighborhood centers in addition to the use-centers of its main activities, all fronting on the central plaza. Greenery would penetrate in strong vectors to the center of town, allowing walks from the backyard to open countryside and beyond.

Credits: Michael Sorkin, Andrei Vovk