Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)
Dr. Miklós Persányi: The Fate of the Károly Kós Architectural Heritage at the Budapest Zoo
THE FATE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF KÁROLY KÓS AT THE BUDAPEST ZOO FROM 1907 TO OUR DAY Károly Kós graduated as an architect in 1907 and went on to become one of the driving forces within the group called 'The Young Ones’, alongside Dezső Zrumeczky, Dénes Györgyi and others. They envisioned creating a national architecture based on the values of folk architecture. Looking at it from today's perspective it's almost unthinkable how they could receive commissions as large-in scale as they did, immediately after graduation. It's even more unfathomable how they could possibly meet the requirements these assignments entailed, both in terms of workload and the challenges to their talent. The fact that Kós had an incredibly fruitful creative period even before he turned thirty is well demonstrated by the astonishing list of his works between 1908 and 1912, which includes the Calvinist Parsonage in Óbuda, the Church in Zebegény (with Béla Jánszky), the Zoo buildings (with Dezső Zrumeczky), the Városmajor School (with Dénes Györgyi), the Vécsey Manor in Szada, the Székely National Museum in Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfäntu Gheorghe, the ‘Church with the Cockerel’ in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca and the centre of the Wekerle Estate in Budapest. He even had the time and energy to build his own home, Crow Castle, in Sztána/Stana. Budapest, already fast developing metropolis between 1908 and 1912, decided to rebuild the Zoo, based on the zoological concept of the ingenious Adolf Lendl, and commissioning designs from Kornél Neuschloss, Gyula Végh, Dezső Zrumeczky, and Kós himself. This was the most varied of the commissions Kós received in this period, because he and Zrumeczky were to design almost twenty smaller or larger pavilions, in styles ranging from the Transylvanian vernacular to the exotic. Their architectural feat has had an important role to play in making the Budapest Zoo a unique part of not just Hungarian but also European cultural heritage. The works carried out a hundred years ago were much applauded at the time. The Zoo flourished right until World War Two, but by 1945 only 15 of the two thousand animals were still alive and most of the buildings had been heavily damaged by the bombings. The post-war reconstruction was carried out in a two-faced manner, because the new political regime sought to destroy the old world ‘down to the foundations’ (as ‘The Internationale’ ran), including the surviving buildings of the Zoo, which for them were mere obstacles on the way to progressive animal keeping rather than mementoes of the greatness of an earlier era. Thus they were demolished or transformed and replaced by buildings created in line with the then fashionable style. Many of the buildings designed by Kós and Zrumeczky never saw the regime change of 1989 (the Ostrich House, the Giraffe House, the Buffalo house, the Crocodile House or the Poultry Run), but even the Deer House, left more or less intact, was relocated. By the time the regime change arrived, the Zoo was deprived of all its former charm and elegance. What little had remained of the architectural treasury of the 1910's had been gradually supplanted by a crowd of unbecoming, spiritless buildings. However, the mid-1990's saw a gradual return to the original style informed by Kós’ genius. It was an unusual attempt to try and introduce modern animal-keeping and the restoration of the architectural heritage at the same time, but by now we have succeeded in renovating all the surviving buildings designed by Kós in their original splendour, removing the products of four decades of architectural ineptitude and even recreating some of the lost treasures: eight vanished buildings or important parts of buildings have been rebuilt using the hundred-year-old original plans. The Budapest Zoo is an excellent example of how we can share our lives with our architectural heritage. It is a well-functioning zoological garden, providing much-sought services to several million people, in a setting where hundred-year-old buildings can be seen in their original splendour, as envisaged by their creator, Károly Kós. Prof. Dr. Persányi Miklós Director, Budapest Municipal Zoo and Botanic Gardens 9
