Sordo Madaleno, építész stúdió, and Buro Happold have won an international competition to design a new collection center for the Hungarian Museum of Natural History (HMNH) in Debrecen, Hungary. Debrecen is approximately 120 miles east of Budapest and is Hungary’s second largest city.

The forthcoming collection center will measure 463,000 square feet and host over 11 million objects for storage and study. It will be located in the University of Debrecen Science Park and augment the Hungarian Museum of Natural History flagship building now underway by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

The decision by Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to relocate the HMNH from Budapest, where it’s been for 200 years, to Debrecen was marred by controversy when the project was announced in 2020. BIG won an international competition to design the HMNH in 2025; the flagship building is now in the design phase.

For the new collection center in Debrecen that will augment the HMNH flagship, Sordo Madaleno ideated an “elongated rectilinear building” meant to be read as “a solid, elemental and timeless design,” the office said in a statement.

The competition jury credited Sordo Madaleno, a third-generation Mexican office based in Mexico City and London, with delivering a design that prioritizes sustainable practices and security.

Visitors will enter the center through a multi-story atrium; internal courtyards will regulate daylighting. Cumulatively the building will have 92,000 square feet of archival space and 20,000 square feet of study space. It will rise three stories above grade and have a basement level. The top floor will be lit by an atrium.

From afar, the collection center will be defined by its striated brick facade with intricate patterning. Its materiality evokes Hungarian clay vessels, Sordo Madaleno stated. This symbolizes the center’s intended function “to protect and incubate” precious artifacts.

Renderings show fossils and other artifacts lining rectilinear shelving. Fernando Sordo Madaleno said in a statement: “The Centre’s staff are stewards of the objects, and the architecture becomes an extension of that stewardship.”

“Within this layered ecology of care, the object is framed not as an isolated artifact but as an embodiment of life-worlds and landscapes that nourish reciprocal relationships,” Sordo Madaleno added. “Our building reflects this mutuality, providing a space of unity between conservator, stakeholder, architecture, and environment.”