Abstract
A distortion of a rounded circle form, Szervita Square Tower, the 2006 biomorphic and parametric
design envisioned by London-based Zaha Hadid Architects LLC, is an adaptation of traditional
tower architecture that has been placed within an innovative architectural setting at Szervita Square,
a regular geometric rectangle shape reimagined as a triangle. The neo futurist aesthetic of Szervita
Square Tower, an eleven-story modern skyscraper, uncannily recalls the symmetry of classic
Palladianism and the exaggerated imperfection of the baroque with its artfully misshapen
biomorphic form set within a conceptual embodiment of the Christian religious-based identities of
Szervita Square, the Church of Saint Anne, and the Immaculata Column, or Mária Column,
surviving centuries-old structures at the shared architectural site.
The pearl of the Danube, Hungary is the Kingdom of Mary, or Regnum Marianum, and the identity
of Szervita Square is Marianist. In the Baroque Christian religious tradition, the Marianist legacy of
the Imperial Vienna-based Servite Order (whose members are devoted servants of Mary, the Mother
of God) defines the identity of Szervita Square. In the homonymous connection between Szervita
Square and Szervita Square Tower, Szervita Square Tower functions as a textured narrative of the
polycultural history of Hungary and, also, contains the Christian religious and historic architectural
legacies of the classic Palladian style Church of Saint Anne, and the original Baroque style
Immaculata Column, or Mária Column, which are conceptually embodied within the transparency
of the exaggerated distortion of its splendorous biomorphic form, a non-form.