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

Detached houses and villas

management of his father's architectural studio in 1931 when the retired colonel of the engineering corps sustained a thrombosis and could no longer discharge his duties. In fact László collaborated with his brother, who was in the employ of the municipality, but as he could not obtain his degree before 1943 due to a freak mishap (his examination designs were mislaid at the University of Technology), the building's blueprints had to be signed by the father. Before starting to work, László enrolled in the summer course of the Dessau Bauhaus supervised by Mies van der Rohe, where he attended classes given by Kandinsky, Klee, Josef Albers and Ludwig Hilberseimer. Márton and László Szabó's studio mostly undertook the designing of detached houses, villas, semi-detached houses, flats and a few apartment blocks. A fine Protestant congregation house of theirs stands in Torockó tér, Pasarét, and they won their most important assignment in a tender competition (for the civil airport of Ferihegy, jointly designed with Károly Dávid).

To return to the Zseltvay House, the building is a modern edifice but the use of natural materials and the employment of looser forms relate it toward organic architecture. The building is connected to its environment with rubble-stone footings and supporting walls as well as stairs aligning minor differences of ground level. It is covered by a gently sloping roof built in one with the wooden upper floor. The girders of the wooden floor structure overhang the wall and appear on the fayade in the shape of eaves. The areas for day-time and nightly use

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