Modernity in the wilderness? Architects’ role in developing rural Hungary, 1930–1960

Abstract

The aim of this article is to survey a longer period in Hungarian architecture starting from around 1930 and into the 1960s in order to investigate how subsequent generations of modern architects related to the social and housing problems of the countryside. It is widely held that although social sensitivity was a dominant feature of the modernist agenda, it was limited to an urban context, with little regard for rural areas unfamiliar to the movement’s leading proponents. Since the most radical and best-organized group of Hungarian architects was a section of the international organization Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, their theoretical work was largely guided by the group’s centre in Zürich. This article traces some of the visions that were set against these ‘imported ideas’ and the extent to which these visions could be realized under the Horthy regime, which was at the time gradually moving towards the far-right. Furthermore, it maps the process that led to the confrontation between modernists and regionalists in the early 1940s. It also shows how the bipolar discourse revolving around social modernization was resolved by the democratic transformations of 1945, which set the stage for temporary cooperation between rivalling factions and led to architects reaching an understanding with reconstruction in mind. However, the hope for a strong and independent farming class and long-term development and planning policies backed by peasant parties was dashed by the communist breakthrough in 1948 As a result, the issue of rural housing would be raised anew only in the 1960s, when the Kádár regime made concessions to the collectivized peasantry. In the final section of this article, I will discuss why both the functionalist modern and regionalist models offered by architects failed. The family house type, which had been spontaneously developed by ‘self-help building’ and was condemned by the architecture profession in a new debate of the 1960s, cannot be explained by mere ideological or cultural discrepancies but through a profound socio-psychological analysis.