Ferkai András: Modern buildings - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2009)

Detached houses and villas

■ The ground plan of the Tyroler villa

constructed by master builder József Tyroler in 1934—35. Farkas Molnár (1895—1945) was perhaps the most important representative of Hungary's modern architecture in the interwar period. In 1921-24 he was trained at the Weimar Bauhaus, worked for the studio of the institute's architect-director Walter Gropius, as well as for Oskar Schlemmers theatre workshop, he painted pictures, prepared etchings and wood- cuts, book covers, photo-montages, and designed furniture. He wrote numerous articles, essays, reviews of architecture and urbanism, of fine arts and design. On his return home he was confronted with the conservative reality of Hungary, but in spite of all his collisions with that, he did all that was in his power to help domesticate modern ideas and creative methods. Thanks to Marcel Breuer’s intercession, he was invited to the 1929 Congress of CIAM in Frankfurt, and was made delegate of the Hungarian section of CIAM until its disbanding in 1938. Having started his career in the late 1920s with designing small detached houses (75 Bimbó út, 24 Vérhalom utca, 4/A-B and 12 Cserje utca, 3 Hankóczy utca, District II, 2/A Lejtő utca, District XII), he only received a few major commissions in the mid-i930S.

Strangely enough, it is not Gropius or the Bauhaus that had an influence on the Tyroler House so much as Le Corbusier, whose principles it bears witness to. The

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