Crossroads of different cultures due to the special geographical position, the Hungary he was able to elaborate every contribution in an original way. Thus was born an autonomous and relevant architectural production, whose essential component is still based on an advanced experimentalism. Despite the break of the Second World War and the parenthesis of socialist realism in its vulgarized interpretation (after all already concluded in 1954 in the face of the serious problems of post-war reconstruction), the Hungarian avant-garde has never interrupted its fruitful elaborations nor its ties. with European currents (see App. IV, iii, p. 721). The cultural debate therefore, albeit subject to the complexity of political events, has been able to develop and enrich, in a varied but not uneven way, the main trends inherited in a capillary way from the modern movement. The never-failing search for a national identity (initially the ” Magyar ” style), which is neither folkloric nor inclined to sentimentality and opposed to the academicism of ‘imported’ languages, contributed in particular. The Hungary it therefore had the opportunity, before and more than the other countries of the former Soviet bloc, to free itself by knowing how to draw innovative ideas from the opulent historical heritage, then grafted with a happy hand on the solid platform of the contemporary.
Having to some extent anticipated rationalism, on the one hand, as well as having placed the use of techniques and materials of the popular tradition (such as brick and wood) at the basis of poetic reinvention ‘Hungarian architecture, in recent years, a consistent reinterpretation of the less dogmatic sources of the modern, bringing together the’ ‘historical fathers” R. Steiner, A. Gaudí, E. Mendelsohn, F.Ll. Wright and R. Buckminster Fuller with the outsiders B. Goff, H. Greene, P. Soleri, R. Pietilä and R. Paatelainen, to which is added the informal by A. Bloc and C. Parent and the neo-baroque by G. Domenig. The red thread that constitutes the connection of the multiple experiences lies in having traced in the metamorphosis, that is in the transposition from the physical, real, to the creative, spiritual space, an anti-naturalistic value, for which ” context ” and ” local tradition ” ‘take on the sense of an authentic synergy between artefact, place and resident.
Therefore, starting from the seventies, a composite current was formed, better a research direction, called ” neoorganic ” or ” neo-romantic ”, which made the thought of B. Goff his own: “you can be part of of a landscape without the need to imitate or disguise it “. The undisputed leader of this address (which rejects any stylistic label) is I. Makovecz, the most genuine talent of the group, author of the programmatic manifesto released during an important traveling exhibition which landed in Budapest in 1985 (after the Helsinki stops, Oslo, Stockholm, Munich, Stuttgart) with the title Organic Architecture in Hungary, immediately transformed into Living Hungarian Architecture. The exhibition where, in addition to Makovecz and others, G. Csete and A. Kovács exhibit, obtains wide international resonance, representing, with pertinent ideals, the other exponents of romantic architecture (from B. Prince to Team Zoo, from E. Asmussen all ‘Ecole de Lille, to K. Kowalski and M. Szyszkowitz).
Few theoretical assumptions: the use of metaphorical forms (human and animal, as in Gaudí and H. Greene), the reference to pre-Christian cultures and a primeval world (as in Mendelsohn, in Pietilä and Paatelainen), the re-evaluation of some elements of popular culture (as in Wright and Soleri). From this point of view, plots without fixed codes become the fulcrum of every design methodology, so that the movement is characterized more by a collective ” feeling ” than by articulating itself in a set of repeatable rules. To the inventories of the styles and material functions of historicism and rationalism are added, as compositionally determining, psychological evaluations and metaphysical demands, made explicit by some, demonstrating freedom of expression, with archetypal, absolute elements.
This explains the forays into the ” archeology ” of I. Gellér and the ” popular ” of A. Kovács. The latter’s projects (kindergarten and nursery school in Kaposvár, 1980) qualify for a moderate postmodern, evident in simple geometries, symmetry and declared symbolisms (defined as ” empathic ”). L. Sáros, on the contrary, interprets the monumental pathos of early Expressionism, paying homage to Mendelsohn in the drawings for the Astronomical Observatory (1971). The syntax of Csete is more complicated due to the continuous contamination, attentive both to pre-Christian Hungarian civilization and to the local Gothic, but does not forget the teachings of the Amsterdam school. The result is imaginative works, often played on the concept of metamorphosis. For Hungary 2014, please check thesciencetutor.org.
Endowed with a remarkable imagination, even if regulated by the mastery of disciplinary means, Makovecz adopts sinuous and enveloping volumes, futuristic shell structures often using traditional technologies and materials. His singular tree-buildings (1983-85) have made school; just as well known are his places of worship, where, perhaps more effectively than in other types, he can create flowing spaces, dramatically marked by ribs, ribs and lamellar diaphragms. Exemplary in this sense are the Chapel at the Farkasrét cemetery (Budapest, 1975-77), from the inside furrowed by majestic wooden shapes curved one over the other, and the recent church in Parks (1992), with an enclosure moved by a roof crested, vaguely Gaudian, and with a scaled coating. For the Hungarian architect the L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, 4, 1992).
