Necessity of Modernization of Modern Buildings

Due to the environmental and economical processes of the world the architectural thinking is started to change radically in the last decades. The danger of the global warming and the climate change motivated us to revalue our activity and its impacts. The concept of sustainability came into being and its role became more and more important in the architecture. It isn‟t visible that the sustainable architecture will emerge as a new architectural style in the future or only its tool system will build in the architectural practice. Anyway the environmental problems are waiting for the reaction of the mankind, especially of the architects having a special role, because they can form the built environment. So architects have to know, use and improve the tools of the sustainable architecture. The new buildings have to comply with strict norms today. They have to be cost and energy efficient. These features are also welcomed at the existing buildings, which represent the dominant part of the built environment. Unfortunately there are a lot of modern houses among the energy wasting buildings. This is especially true in the case of the buildings of the 1970s and 1980s. This paper presents two case studies on Hungarian public buildings, which were designed in the 1970s. It reveals the origins, concepts and values of the buildings, then it summarises their problems emphasizing the necessity of their modernization. It is visible from the description of the designed modernizations how the houses will be able to fulfil the recent functional and energetic requirements.