Russ mansion

Russ Villa in Sopron is one of the city’s valuable listed historic bourgeois villas. The historicist building is not only an architectural monument, but also an important trace of Sopron’s bourgeois past: with its former representative spaces, decorative details and urban location, it offers a distinctive opportunity for cultural use.

The aim of the project was to examine how a city gallery and exhibition space could be created within Russ Villa. The task was not a simple change of function, but the reinterpretation of a sensitive heritage building for cultural use.

We participated in the project with building design services. We prepared the architectural programme design, which served to define the spatial, operational and heritage-related framework for the planned gallery and exhibition functions.

The work focused on how the villa’s existing values and spatial structure could be handled in a way that also supports the operation of a contemporary exhibition space. In a building of this kind, visitor routes, exhibition areas, support functions and the protection of heritage values can only be considered in close coordination.

The programme design for Russ Villa created a professional basis for a possible cultural reuse of the building. The value of the concept lies in the fact that it examined the building, which is closely connected to the city’s memory, not only as a standalone monument, but as a place that could be reconnected to Sopron’s cultural life with a new community function.