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
Requirements and Conditions Owing to his excellent references, Kozma was commissioned with (he planning and interior design for a family villa to be built on the south eastern slope of Rózsadomb, on a plot on the corner of Berkenye and Pajzs Streets in 1936. 8 The client was Lajos Magyar, the owner of Lajos Magyar Machine Belt and Industrial Leather Products Ltd. Having grown weary of hiring a villa in the Buda hills for the summer month of every year as was the habit of the times, Lajos Magyar decided to create a two apartment family home as a permanent home for himself and his wife, as well as for his daughter and her family. He had purchased the plot at a low price previously. According to the client's requirements the family needed two equivalent, spacious, multifunctional living spaces which included easily separable rooms as well as a caretaker's flatlet, a garage and other auxiliary spaces. The positioning and location of the building was no problem - the slightly irregular but very well situated corner plot of 1400 square yards faces South East and offers a beautiful view of almost the whole of Budapest. Since the house was to include two apartments and its ground area was quite large compared to the size of the plot, Kozma strove to bring the house as close to the north-western boundary of the plot as possible, in order to retain a usable-sized garden. A sloping plot made a terraced garden appear the most ap-propriate plan, but the difference in levels that was due to the construction of a basement rendered it impossible for the living spaces to have direct access to the garden, even though this was a solution which Kozma considered beneficial and applied frequently. 9 "Ground plan design, house design, space design" Beside the auxiliary spaces of the basement (garage, laundry room, drying room, boiler house, other storage spaces) and the caretaker's flatlet of one room and kitchen, the house contained two apartments which were almost identical in size and ground plan layout. The ground floor was inhabited by Lajos Magyar, his wife and, for a short time, by the aged grandmother. On the first floor lived Klára Magyar and her family (husband and son). The only difference between the two apartments was that the upstairs terrace was about a metre narrower and that for the sake of Klára Magyar's favoured cactuses, what was almost a must in the period, a 3x3 m conservatory was taken off the balcony and attached to the living room. The most emphatic part of an almost 220nr living space was an enormous living room. This almost 14m long room, whose area was almost 70m 2 , had a row of windows encompassing 10.5m and a bed-sitting room (area about 30m ) which, organically attached to he former, was only divided by an enormous sliding door that disappeared fully in a slot. Jointly, the two rooms must have provided an impressive space. The semi-circular western end of the living room was furnished to fulfil the function of a dining room. In the centre of the ground plan, next to the staircase, there is a spacious entrance hall. The domestic offices of the northwestern section, the kitchen, the pantry, the serving room, the servant's room, and the servant's W.C. opened from this hall. The eastern section of the house included the bathroom 10 , the W.C. the garderobe, and, slightly separated, the nursery. (On the ground floor this was substituted by the grandmother's room.)
