Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 17. (Budapest, 1998)

Éva HORÁNYI: A Villa in Berkenye Street. A Contribution to the Activity of Lajos Kozma in the Villa Architecture of the 1930's in Buda

EVA HORANYI A VILLA IN BERKENYE STREET A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ACTIVITY OF LAJOS KOZMA IN THE VILLA ARCHITECTURE OF THE 1930'S IN BUDA Of all those plans of Lajos Kozma which made it to being built in die 1930's, the Berkenye Street Villa on die southern slope of Rózsadomb is one of the few that more or less retained their original form boüi in tenus of the exterior and of the interior spaces. Surprisingly, the literature which contains a relatively thorough survey of Kozma's architectural work does not devote particular attention to this building, in spite of the fact that there is plenty of information available about it from various sources. Numerous prestigious architectural magazines of the age such as Tér és Forma (Space and Form) or the periodical A Bútor (Furniture) edited by Gyula Kaesz published a long article about the building by the architect Kozma himself". This appeared in the volume uj Magyar Építőművészet (New Hungarian Architecture)

3 which contains all the important buildings of the period 1935-1938. Some parts of it were also published in Kozma's book Das Neue Haus

4 which was published in Zurich in 1941. These facts indicate that the villa was considered as one of Kozma's most important works by the architect himself as well as by the contemporaries of his profession. A few plans and pictures of the villa were found in the Kozma bequest, which was donated to the Archives of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts by Erzsébet Kozma, the architect's daughter in the 1960's. Some of the drawings and the photographs were probably made to illustrate the above mentioned two articles.

5 The original plans which were submitted for building permission, as well as the documentation that records later modifications, have been kept by the client on the one hand and by the Drawing Collection of the Municipal Office of Civil Engineering on the other.

6 The fact that we can rely on the personal account of the patron is a special resource and a great help in examining what are the most difficult questions to trace, ie. the expectations and ideas of the client, the process of commissioning, planning and building, as well as in reconstructing the later history of the building.

7 Kozma's plans and principles regarding the planning of family homes were summarised as an introduction to Das Neue Haus, which is a volume containing fifty' five of his plans - some that were realised and other which remained on paper. He used the unity of function, structure and form as a guiding principle by which to measure other criteria to help him plan modern, state-of-the-art family homes that answer the requirements of a new life style. He classified these criteria as follows: the original problem, creating the ground plan, creating the exterior and interior spaces. In the following we shall make an attempt to assess the extent to which the architect managed to fulfil and realize these criteria in the case of the Berkenye Street Villa.