Hungarian
Architecture before Europe
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by Marco Biraghi
In the last century Hungary played a contradictive role:
geographically lodged in the heart of Europe (and thus a part of that
Central European "special entity" called "Mitteleuropa"),
yet almost always culturally confined to its margins, so that its best
"products" have come to embody an "eccentric" and
"peripheral" centrality.
Hungary's "autonomous subordination" was already noted in
its relationships with Austria within the Hapsburg Monarchy that lasted
until 1918, where the Hungarian position was apparently "tolerated"
with respect to that held by Vienna. This position in effect - gave
it the chance to find its own free dimensions and a capacity for development
that, in some cases was greater, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
than that achieved by the other "head" of the Empire of the
double-headed eagle". And it is again well manifested when, leaving
behind it the painful times of Horthy's regime (when the local Party
of the "arrow-shaped cross" adhered to nazism), Hungary subscribed
the "Warsaw Pact", while managing to cut out for itself from
the start, economic and cultural "elbow room" making it the
most "free" and "open" country in the soviet-controlled
area.
Thus, architecturally speaking, the entire beginning of the last century
was lived by the Budapest architects among contacts and exchanges with
the main players of the Viennese "Secession". This was also
a time for strong linguistic characterisation, that heralded the full
independence and "identity" reached by the Hungarian culture.
Ödön Lechner would be the first architect to elaborate a fully
national style, in a great effort of synthesis among different elements
of English and French traditions as well as oriental ones, which is
comprehensible, considering the origin of the Magyar stock. The resulting
architecture was full of fantasy, gaudy and very vivid (both in the
colours and in the explosive decorations), that while recalling Antoni
Gaudí's works, did not directly descend form it.
Two basic yet different courses of Hungarian architecture stem from
O. Lechner, the founder of this current. The first one is tied mostly
to the regional forms, especially the Transylvanian ones, and it has
in Károly Kós its most important representative; the second
is more "contemporary" and finds in Béla Lajta its
most important interpreter. The latter architect was extraordinarily
able to keep together the two poles of the architectonic system (structure
and decorations) in a twofold unity, a cohabitation of opposites. This
course will lead to no other than the more modern "traditional"
architectural current, which took hold of Hungary and the rest of Europe
as of the 20s. Conversely, the research carried by Kòs and the
group of architects of his generation (collectively known as Fiatalok,
"The Young") gave much more lasting results.
Leaving behind the periods of forced "realistic socialism"
and International Style (that while more emancipated, was not less miserable,
in that it constituted a mere exhausted re-interpretation of the previous
season's materials and forms, the Hungarian architecture of the early
80s follows in Kós' footsteps. The use of "spontaneous"
forms (such as large sloping roofs, or tree trunks full of engravings
used in bearing structures), derived from the Magyar folkloric tradition,
typical of Kós' architectonical language, reappears unexpectedly
in the works of Imre Makovecz, testimony to the willingness of Hungarians
to distinguish themselves in a peculiar way within the Magna Land of
Central Europe.
It is interesting to note how such "nostalgia for the origins",
this search for the local popular roots, blends with post-modern "sensitivity"
(if not "aesthetics" in the strict sense of the word. Maybe
even more interesting is the fact that recently Hungarian and, especially
Budapest architecture is vivified by young architects aware of European
and global styles and fashions (minimalism and de-constructivism above
all), but that are also able to interpret these phenomena to once more
place Hungary (with its history, forms and materials) at the heart of
architectonic discourse.
translation by Silvia Casale, Marco Roncari
