Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)

Influences

IMPRESSIONS OF TOWERS

ffl The drawings are from the handwritten and illustrated booklet entitled Erdélyország népének építése

A CHILDHOOD IMPRESSION FROM NAGYSZEBEN (SlBIu)

7 was especially fond of one of our rooms (in one of the towers of what was once the castle of Nagyszeben -(Sibiu), which was circular, with a domed ceiling and one-and-a-half -metre deep window recesses. From the window we could see the lower town underneath, and beyond that the towering mountains. This room would be very exciting for my imagination as a child. It was the first instance I encountered - unconsciously at the time - the archaic odour and hewn romanticism of long gone Transylvanian centuries... The images, sounds and odours of this old Saxon town left an undelible mark on my memory, ready to come to life in the future, when the time comes’. KOS1991:9~m

Towers are one of the most ancient components of Transylvanian life, representing safety, enclosure and survival. A tower made it possible to keep watch over the surrounding countryside. A tower was a focal point of the landscape. A ruined tower, of which so many can be found throughout Transylvania, refer to the roots of Transylvanian architecture and thus provided a basis for creating a new architecture. (Building over the remnants of ancient or ruined structures is another characteristic of ‘folk’ architecture'. It may have been the tower of Sebesvár (Bologa) and the Almási Castle (Almasu Mare) that provided the inspiration for Kos' design from 1909, Tower on the Hill - both of these castles can be seen to the North from Sztána (Stana).

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