Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 17. (Budapest, 1998)
Éva HORÁNYI: A Villa in Berkenye Street. A Contribution to the Activity of Lajos Kozma in the Villa Architecture of the 1930's in Buda
Compared to what appears the slightly oversized spaces of the living areas, the total area of the auxiliary spaces is much more economical. (The kitchen for example hardly exceeds lOnr.) Such a distinction between different types of spaces, i.e. the functional differentiation between the sizes of rooms and auxiliary spaces, becomes a typical principle in the home design of the 1930's. Although the dimensions of the Berkenye Street Villa are incomparable with the result of Kozma's careful and human scale calculations for the acceptable sizes of the "Central European bourgeois small flat" 11 the proportions of the apartment's ground plan layout follow this principle. The living room which allows flexible transformations into previously defined functions (dining room, study, drawing room, etc.) encompasses nearly 45% of the total area. The spatial forms of the building and the articulation of the facade reflect the ideas of the ground plan as well as the excellent location. They both contain several recurring elements of Kozma's style. The protruding and recessed wall surfaces on the south-eastern facade and the window surfaces which run along almost the whole length of the fixing area, together with the enormous balconies which are featured in front of them, all serve to exploit southern sunshine and the spectacular scenic view. The rhythmically decorative character of the ribs of a reinforced concrete overhung terrace roof which covers the balcony of the first floor was already present on the terrace of the family house in the II nc * District. 10 Herman Otto Street, built in 1934. The architect's own summer house on the Danube island of Lupa also features this structural solution. Further characteristic, returning Kozma motifs on the Berkenye Street Villa are the recessions of the wall surfaces behind the balconies, the balustrade of the balconies which continue the parapet walls under the windows, the railings of parallel metal pipes, the panelled glass sidewalls on the balconies, and the strongly textured ashlar (and some-times even vitrified brick) coating of the basement and the base. One of the building's fortes is the very handling of its mass, solved with a fine sense for proportion and an exploitation of contrasts. One of the most emphatic elements of this is the semi-cylindrical, closed block of the western facade 12 which, as Kozma himself mentions, caused consternation and dislike among the lay onlookers. We know from the client's report that this "bulge" is the fruit of the architect's invention. The owners had ordered large, spacious rooms, but the plot, at least compared to the size of the house, was quite narrow, which is why Kozma tried to increase slightly the living area of the upper stories compared to that of the basement. This was also a way of getting round planning regulations (which name 5 m as a minimum distance from the plot boundary on the street front). It is interesting that even as early as the article in Tér és Forma, Kozma mentions this solution as a virtue of the building's mass-composition and one which provides a contrast with the other, richly articulated surfaces. This is in spite of the fact that according to the original idea the semi-circular section was going to be broken up by enormous curved glass surfaces. All this is clearly visible in the perspective sketches which survive in the Archives of the Museum of Applied Arts as well as in the first plan submitted for planning permission (to be found in the Drawing Collection of the Municipal Office of Civil Engineer-ing). We can also see in these that the curve of the semi-cylinder was flatter according to the first version than the regular semi-circular cross-section it later gained. The windows which were to complement the cylindrical shape had been
