Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Parish Church of All Saints, 1977

Making a virtue of necessity, the designer István Szabó (1914-88) chose the comparatively inexpensive concrete liner BH-60 for the construction material of the church, (in the decades characterised by the universal economic scarcity of "existing socialism" not even bricks were always readily available in the required quantities.) The characteristic shape of the concrete modules used prescribed the distinctive structure and appearance of the church and became part of the overall aesthetic effect made by the bare, unplastered wall-surfaces and the facades.

The harmony of a building depends on the balance of the classic, Vitruvian, criteria of utility, solidity and beauty (utilitas, fiirmitai, venustas). What is illustrated with much invention in Farkasrét is the application of the precept that expresses the very essence of architecture—function is given spatial form through the self-assertion of structure. Pulchrum in debita proportione (beauty consists in the needful proportion of parts), as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches. And it is form in its entirety that our aesthetic judgement depends on.

Although the groundplan of this two-storey building (with the parish offices downstairs) can be defined by a rectangle, the mass in its entirety is divided into dynamic units. The entrance is an opened-up space with the representation of Christ resurrected shown on its sloping glass-covering. Turning left from

■ The destroyed cemetery church in an archive photo, around iggg

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