Modern Architecture in Hungary

Modern Architecture in Hungary

Yumi’s Hungarian husband, A’kos is an architect. He designs houses. One afternoon while we were walking through the old town of Gyor I held my hand out in recognition of the plethora of beautiful architecture that covered the span of the old city.

“Why don’t you build houses like this anymore?” I asked him.

“Like what?” he replied.

“Why don’t you build houses with these beautiful designs flowing all over them, houses that look interesting, and stop building houses in this new modern style that is so boring.”
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Gyor, Hungary- July 14, 2008
Travelogue — Travel Photos
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A’kos replied stoutly to my question, and answered in appropriate text book fashion, “It is the responsibility of the architect to build houses in accordance with the styles of their own time. We can’t build houses of the Baroque period because we do not live in the Baroque. Look at that window,” he instructed me as he pointed to an ornate designed window frame from yesteryear. “Do you think that there is anyone left who could still build windows like that? Why would we design a window that nobody can build anymore? It would be way too expensive to even try.”

He was right. We live in our own time and we must live in it fully. Fanciful flights of romantic architecture and reviving a past that where attention, patience, and detail were valued above brevity and budgets are nothing but straw dogs when taken against a rock hard reality.

Old architecture in Hungary.

I live in the 21st century, and must learn to find the substance in it.

Beneath the strip malls, high-rises, and assembly line, mono-culturalizing world, I believe that there is an underbelly – an underbelly that springs forth the same stories, wonders, and depth as all the underbellies of any time period on this planet.

Maybe I just need to look in different places.

Maybe I need to learn how to appreciate the geometrically standard, white washed, cubicle high-rises of this current world? Maybe I need to learn how to love the Dorian-esque and angular tidings of a monotonously sterile landscape of cookie cutter houses?

Or maybe I need to better learn how to do what these unobtrusive, intentionally discreet buildings are designed to have me do: ignore them.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Words of the Dead
• Czech Republic Travel Photos
• In Gyor Hungary with Japanese Friend