A few decades after the war, with the old associations long gone and the era of enforced “culture houses” of the 1950s being over, people in villages and city quarters want to get together for celebrations again, they want to hold wedding parties and balls in a friendly and pleasant place where they can spend their little free time by a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. They want houses where there is no appointed “culture worker” who enforces the one and only legit culture on them, but where learning and education emerge naturally from free intellect.

There is no funding for this purpose. Still village communities build what needs to be built, with people contributing their labour of an aggregate worth of millions of forints. If you want to build in a simple and smart way, you have to rely on the right construction technologies in the design stage already. What are the right materials for manual, low-cost construction in Hungary today? Bricks and tiles, like they have been for centuries. Materials that are easy to get, that have a price cap of some sort and that can be used for small-scale construction. The use of natural materials does not necessarily mean a cheap-looking building that is exposed to quick decay. On the contrary: the right architects and the construction expertise of community members may lead to richer and nicer buildings that last longer than one emerging from a soulless, bureaucratic approach that does not take you anywhere.

/ Makona village houses design collection, Foreword 88/

Exhibition concept and implementation: Imre Makovecz Foundation
Associates: Lilla Berta, Enikő Harmath-Gyetvay, Gábor Kampis
Translation: Zoltán Farkas
Photos: Bence Csernyus, Lőrinc Csernyus, György Dénes, Tamás Dósa-Papp, Roland Gál, János Jakab – “JJ Fotóműhely”, László György Sáros, Tibor Zsitva
Graphics: Tamás Fodor

The exhibition material contains 21 tableau.