XX. századi műemlékek és védelmük (A 26. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1996 Eger, 1996)

Előadások: - Architecture and identtity

products." — wrote Péter Reimholz. Similarly Imre Makovecz stated: „Our starting point is the living human body in its functioning. The designing architect has to research the creative life." Needles to say that the architectural theory based upon normative Marxism and classical Modernism collapsed, giving birth to a further pluralistic period in Hungarian architectural theory and practice. 2.4. The Period of slackening and fall of Communism Although already in the 1970s one could feel the slackening of the grip of the Communist Party and the seeds of the later pluralism, only the period after the fall of the Iron Curtain gave back Hungarian architecture and its theory the previous pluralism. By the mid 1990s the traditional 'three party system' of Hungarian architecture re-emerged. Almost all critics of contemporary Hungarian architecture agree that there are three main streamings in the architecture of the country: 2.4.1. The Pragmatic Technocrats The communist industrial complex got dismantled, but its technocrats and architects retained their favourable positions in the period of transformation and realigned their forces after the establishment of democracy. Now, instead of serving the Communist Party uncompromisingly, they started to serve foreign and later domestic capital. The architects of this kind are pragmatic in thinking and acting, without much theoretical considerations about meaning of architecture and architectural-urban context. They usually get the commissions of banks, trade centres, hotels and office buildings, trying to solve their task as fast as possible. 2.4.2. The Organic Movement (Makovecz—School) The second streaming is the so-called Organic School, based on more or less clear-cut ideology and codified principles of behaviour as well as accepted formal solutions. It came into being as on opposition to the communistic system and architecture that served it. The starting point was Steinerism, but the theoretical and philosophical conclusions are far-fetching. The ideology of the Organic School is also related to Károly Kós and his ideas of rootedness, sympathy towards pre-Christian past of the Hungarian people as a period that was unspoiled by the ideas of cosmopolitanism and Western culture in general. The adherents of this school are trying to recall the ancient Hungarian spirit in their buildings. This pre-Christian — I would say — pre-Biblical architecture favours non-orthogonal forms, mostly biomorf shapes, or as they call them, organic, that radically differs from the architectural forms of Greco-Roman Antiquity and JewishChristian heritage. 2.4.3. The Conceptuals The third streaming is not political, neither in its philosophy nor in its practice. Still, it has its theoretical background. The architects of this expression are sometimes called Conceptuals, sometimes Cools. In fact, they are neither entirely conceptual nor fully cool. Their conceptualism is contextual, the aim is to capture the spirit of the architectural and cultural context of a