One of Budapest’s emblematic buildings, the 19th-century Drechsler Palace designed by Ödön Lechner, stood unused for almost twenty years. The structure was reconstructed as a heritage building over recent years and became part of the W hotel chain.

An impressive courtyard with ornate façades is at the heart of the hotel’s circulation. This was given a delicate veil-like glass roof, protecting it from the elements and making it intimate and human-scale.

The glass roof’s architectural design was challenging, as finding a place where the roof would respect the internal façades without disturbing their architectural merits was complicated. To fix the roof, the curved staircase walls were exploited and straight lines were used on the shorter sides. This produced a stretched saddle surface whose structural design required a unique solution.

A suspended, tensioned bar-chain mesh supports double-curved glass panels. The tension of the perpendicular bars, bending in opposite directions, helps provide stability. Due to the intense forces, besides being fixed to the wall, the structure had to be anchored by reinforced concrete rings installed at the first- and second-floor levels.

The metal structure supports finely curved, clear, insulating double-glazed panels of unique dimensions due to the courtyard’s irregular contours. Rain falling on the glass roof drains due to the incline through a hidden groove on the two long sides.

The result is an elegant stretched membrane structure that marries perfectly with the courtyard of Lechner’s building.

A similar design principle was employed for the canopy protecting the main entrance of the building. The glass surface curves following the arches of the entrance and ends in a horizontal line at its outer edge, supported by individually twisted, suspended steel cantilevers.

The two glass surfaces create an excellent architectural dialogue, respecting and emphasising the existing architectural merits.