IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

This project proposes a contemporary architectural intervention for the remains of Memi Pasha’s Bath in Pécs, Hungary, aiming to reintegrate the neglected ruin into the city’s public and cultural life. Instead of reconstructing the lost Ottoman bathhouse, the project views the site as a layered archaeological landscape whose meaning resides in the fragments that still exist. The design process was grounded in a combined methodology of literature review, group brainstorming, and collaborative on-site sketching, allowing historical research, collective analysis, and spatial intuition to inform one another. The intervention features a delicate corten-steel canopy that hovers above the reconstructed masonry without making contact. Made of thin, perforated panels supported by slender legs, the structure echoes the spatial organisation of the former edifice while clearly separating the historical, reconstructed, and contemporary layers. Subtle references to Ottoman and later Christian architectural features acknowledge the site’s multicultural history.