Story of the boat

The idea

The lover of the Danube, Lajos Juhász decided in the late 1990-s, that he will build an office boat, with two apartements, for the purposes of an office for his estate-agency. He was well aware, that this was un unusal, unique thing in Budapest. „In Holland: boat and fish, in Hungary brick house and pigs” – he used to say.

The building

Facing many difficulties, applying for licences from authorities, coping with the challenges of creating a harbour Tibor Horváth and Jenő Delacasse (DeHoLeNa) designed the building plans for the office boat according Lajos’s instructions. Under the active command of Jegenye (Imre Farkas) the boat and the bridge has been built in the Fóka öböl (Seal Bay). The lower part has been built by putting too old boats together. The upper part has been built completely new. The isolation (which has excellent characteristica according the thermal imagery) has been provided by panels of the refrigerator company in Jászberény.

The harbour is the same age as the boat is: they both have been settled on the Újpesti Alsórakpart in the year 1999. There were no house numbers yet, so the opposite street numbering has been inherited: 29. (The boat named Vogue next to this boat strangly enough was randomly and royally numbered as number 1.) The quai has been renamed in the year 2011 to Carl Lutz Quai, the house number of course remained the same.

Some years the property business has been flourishing on the boat. The company hired a cook, who has been cooking for the team and the crew for the years to come, feeding the happy enthusiastic ducks and sea-gulls (Danube-gulls) with the leftovers. In the year 2004 the longing for a bigger water has been growing significantly in the owner, therefore he moved to the Adriatic Sea. In this year Miklós Lendvay took over the operation. The boat got a new name and a new crew.

Ecoboat

The company Kláris Ltd. made an attempt in the year 2007 to convert the boat into an eco-friendly boat. Miklós Lendvay and the engineer collegues examined such alternatives like the water turbines, windmills, water cleaning, solar collectors, solar cells, heat pump, the capacity of the sun rays and the cooling of the water.

During the research and examinations the usably solutions have been selected and put into practice: wall-heating with the usage of a heat pump, solar collectors helping in the heating, heat trap and cold trap, roomwise regulation of the heating and cooling, with an evaluation module. According the plans of Imre Varga and Lajos Fülöp the boat has been converted. The main implementers were the companies Bordhaus, Ferrosctruct, Faltherm and Hungaplan.

The boat has been extended by a roof terrace, pontoon garden, conference hall and with two big offices. To compensate the increased weight in the year 2014 the boat has been taken out of water in the Óbuda Dockyard again and new compartments have been built under the boat, according the plans and calculations of Gyula Pompor ship engineer. Also the landing stage has been renewed, and the steel construction was repaired and painted. The majority of the workmanship is due to Ferrostruct Ltd.

Upon the completion of the project the boat became richer with a brand new outlook and the office rooms with new inner decoration.

The profile of the boat: office boat

The boat has been housing cultural, research and engineering companies  (Esco Kft, Bankárház, Underground Publishing House, Alice Marketing, Metodic, Helios Movement Academy, SurgeonFish, Interinn, Oridor, PromptMedia, ASP, FerroFrame). On the boat we had tenants like the writer Márton Gerlóczy (he wrote here his book „The fraternity of the Freeman”, a book about caribian pirats), the photoartist Bianca Otero, Károly Szántó innovation advisor.

Some of our current tenants are: Garbaroyal – the professional system administrator, BenShip – the expert in waterway transport, Kláris Publishing House – publisher of books and films in spiritual science and pedagogy.