“The Hungarian words that relate to the top of buildings – bun, spikes, ridge, horn, hair (shell), spine and tail all express two approaches. One set of these words suggests that the house and the housetop are like the head of a being that has hair, spikes and horns. The other set of words depict the rounded back of a being. From this strange perspective, the words that refer to the related structures are equally interesting. A house with a spiky, spiny top with a rounded back, one that has eyebrows under its hair at the front and has eyes (windows) under that. It stands on its feet, it has legs (columns), “knee-trees” and its eyes open under the forehead. The horns are connected to ears on the sides, above the shoulders. The gates have wings and are supported by eagles.
Although this list is incomplete, it is sufficient to make us realize that what these words depict is more of a strange, surreal being instead of a “realistically perceived” image of a house.The “building creature” stands at a specific spot on the plot of land called life. Its feet are ploughed, i.e. the earth is pulled up around the building. In the middle of the house is the place of fire under the horn. How many stories are told about this place! Stories of fire, of the fire table, of the inner sun, of the smoke, of the presumed path of good and bad souls!
The building creature in which the family dwells, in whose eyes the light of the fire shines, through whose eyes man can look out and look into the inner world of a being, this being lives on in our words.
The sloping ridge of the roof of the Szentendre service building, its hairy forehead with the two natural eyes perched on it, its empty glass face bounded by walls below bring these words back to life through architecture. Such a description of a building may seem too simple and one-sided, because I have not mentioned the other components that make up the building. I have not spoken about its function, the materials of the structures. Indeed, these are important too. However, the ideas that make buildings veritable works of art are rarely discussed and this is not so by coincidence. Yet it is precisely those principles or systems of more general value that are robbed from them and that would be suitable for creating man’s built environment, without the danger of creating an empty world owing to the absence of thoughts. Many of the buildings designed are empty, technocratic or eclectic.”
Imre Makovecz Imre – Thoughts about the words of architecture (excerpt), Diary 2, 80
Exhibition concept and implementation: Imre Makovecz Foundation
Associates: Lilla Berta, Zsuzsanna Gácsi, Enikő Harmath-Gyetvay, Gábor Kampis
Translation: Zoltán Farkas
Graphics: Tamás Fodor
Compilation of the exhibition material is in progress.
