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

ordered and manufactured in Germany but the client's daughter (who monitored the whole of the building process) finally dissuaded the architect from using them, on the basis of her own personal experiences. In the course of the constraction she had noticed that the western - north-western side was unpleasantly windy (especially as the villa was almost the only building in the area at the time) so that at her request the architect decided to wall in the place where the windows had been planned to go. Another strong argument for this was that the windows, if installed, could only have been cleaned with the help of the fire brigade. The closed character of the western and northern facades which concealed the domestic rooms and auxiliary spaces was only broken by the entrances, small windows and round ventilating windows. The composition of the interior spaces of the Berkenye Street Villa is faithful to those elaborate principles of arrangement and space formation which Kozma strove to follow in all his buildings. He always put a great stress on the division of space according to functional groups (i.e. following the requirements of life functions such as living space, eating, sleeping and cleaning). He also stressed the importance of connections between these functions, i.e. of ensuring the shortest and most practical passages between them, of providing for adequate lighting and airing for all spaces and of the practical furnishing of all rooms. Since he perceived all buildings as a spatial staicture defined by function, structure and form, he shaped the internal spatial structure and furniture of his houses according to this principle. In increasing the spatial effect of the building, he put a special emphasis on light as "the modelling device of the interior space". For this reason, and to keep in contact with the view and the natural surroundings, Kozma was predisposed to use large window surfaces. This was particularly successful in the case of the remarkably situated Magyar Villa, since in winter the enormous living rooms which take up almost the entire south-eastern front of the house were sunlit more or less all day, while in the summer the decorative terrace roof of the balconies gave welcome protection against the powerful light. The semicircular western end of the elongated living room

14 housed the "dining room". The unusual shape required that it should be furnished by appropriately adapted curved fitted furniture. Wedged in between low. symmetrically arranged cupboards was a four part curved couch. The glazed cabinet above it was flanked by bookshelves. In the other end of the living room, which was adjacent to the bed-sitting room, a more busy combination of furniture was used to encourage social life with its combination of shelves, coctail-cabinet and secrataire. Although Kozma's original plan was to place a few light sitting-pieces all of different characters, the reading corner was finally given a unified air with an attractive wicker-backed, cushioned suite. The wall surface between the dining and the drawing room section was broken by two doors, one single and one double. The double door opened from the front hall while the small swing door that lead to the serving room "received special emphasis. The strong effect of the marquetry-inlaid walnut door was necessary among the plain furniture in order to balance the furnishings which, built next to the wall, played a connecting role between the two poles of the large spatial form." The inlaid door was made on the basis of István Pekáry's plans who was a famous designer of carpets and ceramic pictures.

15 The enormous sliding door, which fulfilled the function of a wall, was used as a mobile space-divider to separate the living room from the bed-sitting room. Running on bronze rails sunk into the floor, it was