Hungarian Architecture Research Articles

Russian historical and cultural landscape of Port Arthur and Harbin

The article reflects the results of the research conducted by the authors within the framework of the scientific project “Architectural image of the Motherland: Budapest, St. Petersburg, Harbin. European and national (local) aspects in Russian and Hungarian architecture – a comparative study of the turn of the 19th – early 20th centuries”. Based on archival data and materials from the authors’ field surveys, a systematic picture of the formation of the Russian cultural landscape of Port Arthur and Harbin is presented.

The lines of Harbin Art Nouveau

The article presents the results of a study carried out within the framework of the research project “Architectural Image of the Motherland: Budapest, St. Petersburg, Harbin. European and national (local) aspects in Russian and Hungarian architecture - a comparative study of the turn of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries.” Based on a review of research literature and field surveys conducted by the author in the summer of 2023, a systematic picture of the Art Nouveau architecture in Harbin was compiled. The main stages in the evolution of the style as identified in the study are reflected in the cityscape of distinctly bounded districts.

The formation of the architectural landscape of Szeged, Hungary. 1872-1930.

The article, written during the implementation of the international Russian-Hungarian project, is of an overview nature. The author's goal is to expand the understanding of Russian colleagues about the Hungarian architecture of the late XIX – first third of the XX centuries. Szeged was chosen as an example of a large-scale reconstruction: the city, almost completely destroyed by the flood of 1879, was rebuilt in a short period and became the "southern capital" of Hungary. Based on field research in 2022, three layers of the architectural and spatial landscape of Szeged are considered: "imperial" (borderless classicism and historicism), "national" (Magyar secession) and interwar (Art Deco). The article is illustrated with photographs of the Hungarian participant of the project G. Csonadi. The object of the study is the city of Szeged, located 169 km south of Budapest, near today's Hungarian-Romanian and Hungarian-Serbian borders, at the confluence of the Tisza and Maros rivers. It is the second most important city in Hungary, the most important point on the "mental map" of the country, the capital of the Hungarian plain and a symbol of the revival of the national spirit. The subject of the study is the process of constructing an architectural "image of the Motherland". In our work, we use an interdisciplinary approach, combining elements of history, architecture, cultural studies and social geography. This allows us to explore and analyze architectural heritage more deeply, its impact on the formation of the cultural landscape and social processes. Using the example of the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, the process of constructing the "image of the Motherland" developed in a time perspective is considered. We have identified several layers in the architectural landscape of Szeged: regular-imperial (Biedermeier, neo-Baroque, borderless classicism), national-romantic (from historicism in the spirit of the French Renaissance to the Magyar secession), interwar (Art Deco based on neo-Romanticism). We see that the "spirit of the times" and the "image of the Motherland" are not static and are embodied in various forms. The image of "little Vienna", resurrected according to the patterns of the Enlightenment era on the far periphery of the Empire, is being transformed under the onslaught of the nationally oriented bourgeoisie. Bizarre and eccentric architectural experiments sponsored by private original customers are replaced by monumental pathos ensembles that help citizens jointly survive the deepest collective psychotrauma. The Synagogue, the Cathedral, the University and the "sunny houses" embody different facets of the Hungarian identity.

Károly Kós in Istanbul

AbstractKároly Kós, a pioneering master of 20th century Hungarian architecture, spent two years in Istanbul as a fellow of the newly established Hungarian Institute for Science in Constantinople between 1916 and 1917 to pursue research on the architecture of the Ottoman Empire. During this period, he created a whole series of drawings of numerous Byzantine and Ottoman historical buildings and street sections. A volume entitled Istanbul - Urban History and Architecture was published as a summary of his research. However, this historical event and the resulting publication have a far-reaching significance beyond themselves in many ways. Firstly, the aforementioned period was a significant turning point in Ottoman-Turkish architectural history. On the other hand, Kós's work is more than just an analysis of architectural and urban history.This paper aims to provide an insight into the period and the turning point between the late Ottoman and the early Republican era of Turkey's history; the local context of Kós's activities in Istanbul and, at also to analyse the architectural-historical achievements of the Hungarian master's work in the location which he himself described as ‘The City”.

Experimental study on examining the fire load of a small compartment

Abstract In Hungary a lot of people live in condominiums or in block of flats where fire often occurs despite of precise design and effective fire protection arrangements. This means a hazard for the people living there, for the building constructions and also for the environment. A deeper knowledge of the burning process and examining the negative effects of fire load on building constructions with scientific methods are actual questions nowadays. In order to get to know the phenomena more accurately, fire spread in a bedroom was modeled and numerical simulation was carried out, which is presented in this paper in detail. These experiences may help increasing the fire safety and preventing fires in apartments. The simulations were carried out considering the characteristics of the Hungarian architecture.

Határkő

A client's dream to have a Scandina - vian styled home in Budapest took form when remodelling an existing villa in the Buda Hills. Faced with the problems of an extremely steep site, hard to access by car, and the need for will lit spaces the designers adopted the idea of reversing the home: entrance, garage and living spaces sitting above the bedrooms and ancillary functions. Working with brick cladding, raw concrete, and daylighting as design tools a balance between exterior and interior has been achieved. Whether or not the home is Scandinavian in style is open for question as it seems to fit comfortably alongside its contemporaries found in modern Hungarian architecture.

Magyar építészek Dél-Ázsiában és közvetítőszerepük a magyar építészetben

The role of oriental art was significant in architecture at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. While the Art Nouveau movement in Western Europe was influenced by the Japanese and Persian art, Hungary made efforts to find the origin of the Hungarian architecture. This study presents the Asian trip of architect Károly Róbert Kertész, published in his work entitled Architecture of Ceylon. In the 1930’s architect István Medgyaszay was invited to India to design a museum in Mumbai. His archive, containing the plans, photographs and letters born during the trip, can be found in the Medgyaszay Memorial House. During the reconstruction of Medgyaszay’s Indian trip (2021) some mysterious watercolour plans were discovered among his designs. Additionally, as a result of the research in Mumbai (2020) this study introduces István Medgyaszay’s friendship with Perin Jamshedji Mistri, the first professional woman architect in India; and highlights the role of Jenő Cholnoky geographer in the work of both of the aforementioned architects.

Resort Architecture in Regional Perceptions

The regional aspirations of resort architecture give specific perspectives on the history of regionalism. The development of the shores of Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe, was determined by this particular regional aspiration. Iván Kotsis was a defining figure of Hungarian architecture between the world wars, and had a significant impact on the period - not only with his work as an architect, but also as a university professor and a public activist. This paper examines his activity around Lake Balaton on different scales, since it represented a peculiar perspective within the history of regional ideas. The research concludes that Kotsis’ regional perspective focused on resort architecture was an independent conception separated from both modern and local interpretations. Based on his university work and the knowledge transfer resulting from his international relations, he developed an integrated perspective on the region from an academic position. Reflecting on the problems of holiday resorts, he formed an autonomous method with which he experimented, to mediate between the universal modern approach and the local features of the landscape.

Selected Buildings in Transylvania: About Ybl Miklós' Designs

Ybl Miklós is a leading figure of nineteenth-century architecture, one of the prestigious Hungarian architects who won the Franz Jozef Knights' Cross and the Knight's Cross Order of Leopold medals, a member of Budapest's Board of Public Works and the Association of Architects and Engineers. His works represented highly complex national and European heritage values and were a reference point for nineteenth century Hungarian architecture. In 2014, when UNESCO celebrated the bicentennial of the birth of Ybl Miklós, it marked both his personality and the architect's vision. In his honour, the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the Szent István University in Budapest bears his name.Some of his works in Transylvania and the connections he had with Transylvanian nobles are lesser known. This article highlights another aspect of his work.

Adalékok Kondor Béla sors-történetéhez

Adalékok Kondor Béla sors-történetéhez

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

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.

Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900

Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900

Traces of a church and fortress built prior to the Hungarian conquest found in a Benedictine monastery : New discoveries in Kaposszentjakab

The ruins of the former Benedictine Abbey of Zselicszentjakab can be found in the eastern part of Kaposvár, in the Kaposszentjakab district. The walls, which had previously only survived almost completely under the ground surface, were excavated in the 1960s under the direction of Emese Nagy. The archaeological park created in this beautiful natural environment is one of the finest medieval monuments in the area. The monastery’s church is of particular value. With its walls that rise to 2–2.5 meters high in some places and its stone carvings, it is one of the most important monuments of 11th-century Hungarian architecture. This is Hungary’s first known privately founded (non-royal) monastery. We have also learned about the circumstances of its foundation, including the existence of a church that used to stand here from the text of a transcription of the deed of foundation. Despite all this, the site has received relatively little attention for decades. Only short publications were published about the excavation. These merely clarified the construction history and layout of the monastery in broad strokes, while the church that had previously stood here was not identified. In 2014 and 2016, we were able to perform new excavations, which significantly expanded and clarified our previous knowledge. Since the most important new results are related to the period before the foundation of the monastery, I will introduce these first, and then I will briefly discuss the history of the construction of the monastery.

Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900Edited by József SisaTranslated by Stephen KaneBasel: Birkhäuser, 2016.996 pp.; 767 color ills.Cloth $112.00ISBN 9783035610093

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsMotherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900Edited by József SisaTranslated by Stephen KaneBasel: Birkhäuser, 2016.996 pp.; 767 color ills.Cloth $112.00ISBN 9783035610093Matthew RampleyMatthew Rampley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by West 86th Volume 26, Number 1Spring–Summer 2019 Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, New York Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704653 Views: 39Total views on this site © 2019 by The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Review: Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900, edited by József Sisa

Jozsef Sisa, ed. Motherland and Progress: Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900 Translated from the Hungarian by Stephen Kane Basel: Birkhauser, 2016, 996 pp., 767 illus. $112.00 (cloth), ISBN 9783035610093 Research on the nineteenth century, including the reevaluation of historicism, has become an area of intense interest throughout Europe over the past few decades. This bulky and richly illustrated volume on Hungarian architecture and decorative arts, published in Hungarian in 2013 and recently translated into English with minor changes, exemplifies this tendency. Presenting a comprehensive history of the nation's art has long been a focus of art historical writing in Hungary. A plan for an eight-part series—of which this book is a part—was initiated in the 1970s, and some of the volumes were published in the early 1980s, including one on the 1890–1919 period.1 Work on the volume focusing on the nineteenth century was begun, but when historicism became a subject of reevaluation during the 1980s, previously overlooked artifacts came to light and a vast new literature emerged. This latter point is well illustrated by the bibliography in Motherland and Progress : most of the works making up its nearly nine hundred entries were written during the past three decades.2 The volumes in the series were conceived as handbooks, each presenting the history of a given era's art and architecture according to the current state of research. At the same time, new research is integrated with that of earlier generations of scholars. A total of sixteen authors participated in writing the latest volume, and two-thirds of its chapters were written by volume editor Jozsef Sisa, the leading scholar of nineteenth-century Hungarian architecture. Originally, the book was meant to discuss all the fine arts together, but faced with the outpouring of available materials, the volume's editors decided to treat the history of architecture separately. This decision …

Historiography of post-war modern architecture in Hungary – evaluation – research – preservation

Reviewing the research on post-war modern Hungarian architecture we find a serious backwardness. This paper presents an overview of the situation and an explanation focusing on three factors. The first is the underestimation of the socialist modern architecture by the lay public, but also by some professionals. The second field of investigation is the research background: institutes, researchers, funds and the accessibility of archival material, and the results achieved despite the difficulties. The paper also surveys the preservation of this heritage, and finally presents a recent rehabilitation project, one of the few positive examples.

Review: Lechner: A Creative Genius

Lechner: A Creative Genius Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest 20 November 2014–28 June 2015 Odon Lechner (1845–1914) is probably the best-known Hungarian architect among architectural historians outside Hungary. For more than a century, the complexity of Lechner’s experiment with a “Hungarian style” has generated fierce theoretical debates, often strongly influenced by contemporary politics. It is the sort of topic that inspires each new generation of scholars to explore anew the construction of nationalism in the fine arts. The centenary of Lechner’s death provided the impetus for the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, together with the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences, to stage this valuable and stimulating show. The last time an exhibition had been devoted to Lechner was in 1985, a generation ago, so although he features in most subsequent publications focusing on Hungarian architecture around 1900, it was high time for another comprehensive look at his oeuvre. There was also another urgent agenda that made this exhibition highly significant: Hungary had applied to UNESCO to list five of Lechner’s major buildings as World Heritage Sites: the City Hall of Kecskemet (1893–97), the Kőbanya Parish Church (1894–97), the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest (1893–96), the Geological Institute in Budapest (1897–99), and the Postal Savings Bank (1900–1901), likewise in Budapest. The urgency stemmed from the fact that some of Lechner’s buildings, especially the Museum of Applied Arts, are in very bad condition and require expert restoration. There are now plans to carry out such work, which will be combined with the construction of a …

Nimbusz és identitás. Az IPARTERV tevékenységének recepciója a korai Kádár-korszakban

The imposition of socialist realism caused great loss of prestige and intellectual confusion in Hungarian architecture. After 1956, in the first years of the Kádár era it was preoccupied by a sort of “self-rehabilitation” and by the related aim of reviving Hungarian modernism. In this period of search the new architectural phenomena in industrial investments attracting the attention of designers and architecture theoreticians active in other areas of architecture assumed special significance. Under the industrializing programs central to the party propaganda, there was clear-cut political intention for a long time to build materially and technically good-quality, well-designed, monumental industrial building complexes. Architectural creativity received a great boost from the efforts to create structural systems in view of the western engineering innovations and tendencies of form, adapted flexibly to the specificities of the industrializing program launched in the late 1950s, to the new technological systems and the transforming conditions of the building industry and economy. It is not accidental therefore that a certain nimbus evolved soon around the central institution of the field, the Industrial Building Design Company (IPARTERV): the company gradually became a special creative workshop, and industrial architectural planning became a booming branch of the economy. The reception of the IPARTERV activity in the early Kádár era was dominated by the emergence of this nimbus. The aim of the paper is to explore the decisive architectural and engineering approaches, personal and collective planning roles, architectural theoretical tendencies and political factors that shaped the specific role of this company.

Centralized Spaces in Hungarian Church Architecture between the World Wars – Historical and Structural Survey of the Dome of Ottokár Prohászka Memorial Church

Architectural research, focusing on Hungarian architecture in the inter-war period so far, have mainly analysed buildings and architects regarding the international modern architecture and the path leading to development of modern Hungarian architecture. The present article undertakes complex research on an emblematic, but less discussed building of the era with the related competition, the sacral buildings with similar structure and space arrangement. The social and art historical research is supplemented with the analysis of the behaviour of the structure and the circumstances of the construction. Besides investigating the era of the construction of the church, a brief description of the planning competition is presented with archetypes of the architectural history and the structures, also showing the construction process. The description is complemented with the results of the examination on the spot and the reconstruction of the presumable original statics calculation.

Tradition and Liturgy: Centralising Tendencies of Lutheran Church Architecture in Hungary during the Interwar Period

The majority of the architectural research focusing on Hungarian architecture in the Interwar period, has to date, mainly analysed buildings with regard to international modern architecture and the steps leading to the development of modern church architecture. This research has however, only marginally expanded to include Evangelical Lutheran church architecture. The present article undertakes a complex research on a special building type, which increased between the World Wars and was determined by a geometric centralised ground plan based on both national and international architectural tradition. Lutheran churches built between the World Wars with central ground plans are analysed from both a liturgical perspective, examining the theological aspect and the use of space, and also from the tradition of the ground plans.