Ferkai András: Modern buildings - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2009)
Detached houses and villas
Engineers. During the war he was twice drafted into labour camps, never to return from the second period of forced-labour service. Unlike the playschool and the Pasarét flats, the Holitscher Villa is a controversial design. With its elliptical lines, sliding windows, interior winding stairs, and its terraces with tubular railings, the building could be a perfect example of the "streamline" style, but on closer inspection, the floor plan will reveal features alien to this world. Such is the main entrance with its diagonal axis, the elliptical porch with its dual columns, the conservatory with its fountain and pool, or the adjoining salon and dining room accessible via sliding-folding doors. Add to that the almost Baroquelooking impressiveness. It was the spaces inside where the architect was able to give reign to his creative talent: he designed the built-in furniture, wall-niches and facings of the living room and bedrooms, and every detail and fitting of the luxurious bathroom. The two bedrooms, belonging to the master of the house and to his wife, behind the "prow” pointing to the street, must indeed have created an extraordinary space: united by a sliding wall they had curved walls opening up a panoramic sight through the sliding windows. Interestingly, this building has never found its way into Hungarian publications, even though pictures of it appeared in Decorative Art, the 1939 almanac of the English periodical Studio, next to the Lois Welzenbacher resort house at Zell-am-See, another "streamline'' building. There was another route of domesticating modern architecture. "Of Hungary's architecture we thought," wrote from Argentina in 1989 an energetic participant in the pre-war activities, "that innovative architecture, particularly the prince pies oft Bauhaus, should be transplanted into Hungarian soil. We frequently visited Italy, Austria and Germany, where we saw that the new forms and principles were adapted to the spirit of the given place. Only those adhering to Bauhaus guidelines 100 percent accepted their internationalism as legitimate, and thus they became dogmatic. ” The author of these lines, László Szabó (1907—97) was but one of those who regarded international modernism in architecture as the first step toward purification. What they saw as the second step would be the adaptation of the innovative architecture to the local climate and national spirit. Although similar slogans were heard from Hitler's Germany, too, Iván and Endre Kotsis, Tibor Kiss, Pál Virágh, György Rácz, István Janáky, Gyula Rimanóczy, János Wanner and many others cannot be said to have followed the ideology of Blut und Boden when they began to employ ridged roofs, rubblework, and wood. They continued designing modern buildings, except slightly more comfortable ones than 20
