The Community House in Dunajská Streda, now the Benedek Csaplár Municipal Cultural Centre, is a strongly impressive building in the centre of the town. Its expression is determined by the structuralistic division of the floor plan into several sections, which corresponds to the division of the mass. The voluminous solitaire is complemented by a foreground in the form of a park with an axially placed fountain. For the design of the Community House the architects received the Award of the Slovak Association of Architects. A characteristic element of the Social House in Dunajská Streda is a total of 11 spatially extended loggias on the third floor. The façade composition is dominated by the verticals of the side walls, which are complemented by the horizontal alternation of solid and glazed surfaces. The walls are clad in white precast concrete panels with a fluted relief pattern that seamlessly extends into the monumental figurative artwork by Jozef Jankovič on the northeast façade.
Functionally, the building is centred around a 480-seat auditorium and a 320-seat cinema. Originally, the perimeter housed ancillary spaces with natural daylight, including a restaurant, a club room, a library, administrative offices, exhibition spaces, and technical facilities. Structurally, the building is built as a reinforced concrete monolith. The prefabricated wall panelling has been transformed into the interior as well. In the entrance foyer with a height of two storeys there are still original works of art, such as a wooden sculpture by sculptor Štefan Kubík or a stone mosaic by Ladislav Berger.
The building belongs to the current of Late Modernism with Brutalist influences. The successful design was later reused in the town of Vranov nad Topľou, where it served as the basis for the local cultural and community centre, constructed between 1977 and 1987 as part of the state-supported Action Z programme.
author of the description: Monika Bočková
Bibliography:
DULLA, Matúš – MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta: Architektúra Slovenska v 20. storočí. Bratislava: Slovart, 2002, s. 442
ŠLACHTA, Štefan: Spoločenský dom v Dunajskej Strede., ČS Architekt č. 17, r.1979, s. 3
ŠLACHTA, Štefan: Spoločenský dom v Dunajskej Strede, hodno vidieť., Projekt č. 7, r.1978, s. 43 — 45
ZALČÍK, Tibor — DULLA, Matúš: Slovenská architektúra 1976 — 1980, vydavateľstvo VEDA, Bratislava 1982, s. 63 — 64
MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta - SZALAY, Peter. Domy kultúry na Slovensku: Vzostup a pád jedného typologického druhu. In Osvěta, kultura, zábava: kultúrní domy v Československu,Michaela Janečková, Irena Lehkoživoá (eds.) 2024, VI PER: Praha, 601 s.
