Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)
A view from afar
Hungarian Architects (and the membership that also entailed) for getting married. He won the medal with a joint project with Kós, and was subsequently able to get married. Géza Maróti offered double Kós' current salary if he joined his team. Maróti needed Kós for assignments like designing the Hungarian Pavilion of the Exposition of Venice or the glass dome of the Mexican National Theatre, while Kós could also develop his drawing prowess while working with Maróti. Maróti also had excellent contacts abroad, especially with Finnish architects - some years later it was Saarinen who invited Maróti to teach at Cranbrooke, USA. Maróti even visited Kós during his stay in Turkey in 1917-18. Kós1 outstanding ability to establish social contacts sprung partly from necessity, having been uprooted to move to Budapest, where he had no friends or relatives apart from the members of his immediate family. He became friends with József Bartóky, official of the Ministry of Agriculture while the latter was overseeing the construction of the Catholic church ofZebegény that Kós designed. They were the only two Calvinists on the team working on the project. Bartóky supported Kós later on as well: during World War One he assisted Kós to a commission for designing a hunting castle for Hapsburg Duke Joseph in the Görgényi Alps of Tranysylvania. The commission to design the Calvinist Parsonage of Óbuda was the result of friendly and collegial loyalty: Zrumeczky insisted that they undertake the job jointly with his friend, Károly Kós. The curator of the Calvinist Parish of Óbuda was Kornél Neuschloss, who must have been satisfied with their work, considering that later he recommended both of them to the Municipal Council to make the designs for the Budapest Zoo buildings. Kós recalls how initially their commissioner had been slightly unsure of the two young architects. The task was great and the project lurched on rather haltingly at some points. Despite the hardships they eventually succeeded and the renovated Zoo was opened in 1912 much to the satisfaction of the public. As part of the success, Kós was initially offered a position as municipal head engineer, but opted instead to be commissioned by the municipality to design the School Complex in Városmajor (with Dénes Györgyi), while Zrumeczky was commissioned to design the School in Áldás Street. In his autobiography Kós mentions a promise made by the municipality, according to which he would receive a commission from the city at least every two years. The commission to design the School of Horticulture in Hűvösvölgy probably came under this agreement (but the project was later abandoned because of the war). Kós' watercolour perspective view of the building was kept at the City Hall for a while, but became lost at some point. The list of subsequent commissions includes projects in Marosvásárhely/Tárgu Mures (public works), Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfäntu Gheorghe (museum and hospital), Kolozsvár/ Cluj-Napoca (Calvinist church) and Budapest again (Wekerle estate), until the Great War caused a temporary pause in Kós1 career. The young, talented and hard-working architect was not alone at the start of his career. He had by his side his closest friends and colleagues from university - predominately Zrumeczky and Györgyi initially and later also Béla Jánszky. On architectural projects the former of the two was especially significant for him. His connection to the family of Dénes Györgyi was important in its own right, notably as Dénes' father, Kálmán Györgyi was an editor of the paper Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Applied Art). The Györgyi (formerly Giergl)-family was very active and acknowledged in art, applied art and architecture. While Kós and Zrumeczky must have had a very similar mind set in terms of work (sometimes they would get up from the drawing board, swap places and continue one another's work), their relationship with Györgyi, who graduated a year later because of a medical problem, was rather different. In one of his writings Kós describes that more than twenty architects worked for Györgyi and that there was always plenty to do. Judged by the account sent to his wife-to-be, he had numerous projects on his hands in parallel during the 1909-1910 period, while they were running for the assignment to design the Hungarian pavilion at the World Expo in Rome. (A contemporary project for the Turin World Expo was won by Dénes György jointly with Emil Tory and Móricz Pogány). It was in the same period that they conceived the concept for an artists' colony to be created in Kecskemét. The planning office of Dénes Györgyi was successful, with plenty of commissions, which Györgyi managed to maintain in the interwar period. Kós, on the other hand, stated in his writing that he never hired a hand for making his sketches - he could only work on his own or in his colleagues' company, that is, in the way he worked in the university studios as an undergraduate. Preferring to work alone or with a handful of colleagues and old friends set Kós apart and became one of the key factors of his professional life. He could clearly see the problems inherent in his assignments and could also articulate his proposed solutions clearly and on a high intellectual level. He was capable of focussing on the significant, and could win the trust of commissioners with his talent and empathy and keep it with his hard work. Having been commissioned to design the Székely National Museum or the centre of the Wekerle Estate are both good examples - he received the commission for the latter after handing in a 1:500 scale plan and giving a presentation using only a piece of chalk and a blackboard. When setting out on a project, Kós often made a picturesque perspectival view of the building and then made the floor plans and sections and drafted cost calculations based - which later proved to be astonishingly accurate. As work progressed, it often turned out that one man was not enough for the job in hand. It must have been very difficult for Kós to carry out jobs single-handed in locations several hundred kilometres from each other (and his home). He needed colleagues, who he would often leave to finish a job, when he saw fit. This happened with the Városmajor 15
