New Campus for Central European University in Budapest, Hungary

The Central European University is a private university accredited in the USA and Hungary. It is based in Budapest. A new campus is being built in the heart of the city near the famous St.-Stephans-Basilika. The design of the new CEU campus blends in with the historic surrounding protected as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO. For this reason, the design was awarded BREEAM certification. The abbreviation stands for “building research establishment environmental assessment methodology“ and is regarded as the oldest method of assessing sustainable development in buildings. CEU is the second university in the whole of Europe to be certified according to this method.

Elliptical staircase with architectural concrete finish

To achieve the architect’s idea of architectural concrete in the staircase, MEVA engineers developed a special formwork design with the all-plastic facing alkus GM6. The walls were climbed on special platforms in 3 m lifts. The concrete finish is spotless.

30 cm slab spanning 6 m

The 30 cm thick slab above the elliptically shaped staircase was supported by special steel beams spanning 6 m. This way, work in the staircase could be continued without interruption.

Dividing walls between new and old building with Mammut 350

The concrete walls separating the new building from the old were poured using Mammut 350 wall formwork, whose panels, 2.5 m wide and 3.5 m high, matched the layout of the wall perfectly. Thanks to the formwork’s heavy duty load capacity of 100 kN/ m² the 7 m high walls could be poured without any speed restrictions and in one go. The panels were tied through the existing walls.

9,53 m high slabs with architectural concrete finish

The high floating roof of the campus auditorium was also poured with a high quality architectural finish and supported by ID15 shoring towers.

Cladded columns

The existing columns were cladded in concrete. Mammut wall panels achieved the 112 x 150 cm footprint and 5.50 m height with a minimum of effort. The architects had a special design in mind for the finish, achieved easily and effectively by mounting birchwood ply facing to the formwork.