Veszter Gábor: Villas in Budapest. From the compromise of 1867 to the beginning of World War II - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

ry, the building still belonged to the category of “white cube” houses, just like the above-mentioned villas designed by Kozma or Molnár and Fischer. A few of these large, elegant white villas were still built at the end of the thirties and the beginning of the forties (e.g. the Járitz Villa built between 1941 and 1942 by Fischer in Baba utca, or the Rassay Villa erected in the same years in Gárdonyi Géza utca), but the domination of the cube houses was overthrown by high-roofed, detached houses employing more traditional forms and proportions.

The Lukóy Villa II., Battai utca I2IA

This development did not characterise Hungarian modernist architecture only, and it was not brought about by problems inherent to the profession. Every dictatorial regime of the 20th century was at loggerheads with all forms of modern art (including architecture). After Hitler’s coming into power in Germany, the internationalist character of the white cube houses was counterposed by revivalist, neo-Classical monumentalism in public buildings and national traditionalism in private dwellings. This change of style left its mark in all countries under German influence. A similar change took place in the Soviet tlnion, but it did not influence the architecture of villas, this particular kind of building being unknown there.

In Hungary, the new trend was given the name of “nationalising tendency”, notwithstanding the fact that it had not much more to do with Hungarian folk architecture than with German Heimatstyl. László Miskolczy built a

60