Orion Bar
There are buildings we admire, and there are buildings we carry with us.
For me, Orion Bar belongs to the second group.
Standing on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, it represented a remarkable moment in Hungarian modernism — a time when architecture was optimistic, experimental and quietly cosmopolitan. Rather than imitating Mediterranean clichés, it imagined a different future for the lake: elegant, lightweight and unmistakably modern.
Designed by István Márton for the Hungarian Journalists' Holiday Resort, Orion Bar quickly became a local landmark. According to local legend, its circular form was inspired by The Fantastic Journey of the Spaceship Orion, the science fiction television series first broadcast in Hungary in 1968. Whether true or not, the building always looked as if a small spacecraft had landed among the trees.
After the political transition, it became a nightclub before gradually falling into disuse. Most of the surrounding holiday complex disappeared first. Orion survived a little longer, until demolition began in June 2014.
This watercolour is not intended as a reconstruction.
Instead, it brings together fragments of memory: warm summer evenings, long autumn afternoons, conversations, music and the peculiar atmosphere of a building that seemed to belong equally to the past and the future.
Sometimes architecture disappears long before we stop inhabiting it in our minds.
Perhaps that is why I continue to paint places like Orion Bar. Not simply to preserve them, but to remember the way they once shaped our experience of the world.
Artwork Information
Medium
Watercolour study on paper
Series
Places to Remember
Location
Balatonszéplak, Lake Balaton, Hungary
Architect
István Márton (Lakóterv)
Continue the conversation
Follow the Daurama Project on social media for works in progress, new paintings and stories from the studio.
