Uniting Heaven and Earth
“Let us appreciate the mighty quest to link the heavens and the earth, and the immense effort to retain everything that has been and might be of value.” I.M.
As we were travelling through Hungary last year, we came across by chance the striking primary school gymnasium designed by the Hungarian organic architect Imre Makovecz, on the main road in the town of Visegrad. Its form echoes the Mogyoro Hills behind and the mix of natural stone at its base with the tree-like Fachwerk beams topped by windows creates a feel of mountain and forest. Closed due to Covid, its interior could only be guessed at, and later through photos on internet, we could see the theme wonderfully furthered in the building's interior. It served as a reminder to us to research and then seek out more examples of Makovecz's extraordinary work on our return to Hungary in 2021.
The primary school gymnasium in Visegrad
This remarkable architect was born in 1935 in Budapest. He was jailed whilst at technical university for taking part in the failed revolution of 1956. After he was freed, he used every chance he could get to defy the communist regime, designing unique public and also private buildings that were as far from the mass-produced communist architecture as possible. Imre Makovecz was dedicated to the study of anthroposophy, and when he was banished from Budapest to the hills of Visegrad, he used that opportunity to start designing imaginative sculptural buildings, campsites, restaurants, toilet blocks that had a life of their own, moving in the light and shadows of the forests and hills around them and raising the mundane to the spiritual, reflecting influences from Rudolf Steiner and Frank Lloyd Wright.
We spent a day in the Mogyoro Hills near Visegrad, walking the footpaths, looking at Makovecz' structures as we came upon them, often unexpectedly: a toilet block like an upturned boat, the Mogyorhegy Restaurant from a distance nestled into its landscape, a single chair isolated in the woods dedicated to the Hungarian poet László Nagy, the Yurt Camp bringing together built structures and natural ones, 'living creatures emerging from the ground' as Makovecz himself noted.
A residential building in the Yurt Camp
Most impressive and moving was the Forest Culture Centre, the final building of the Mogyoro Hill series. Imre Makovecz’ words express the essence of this building better than anything I could write about it. The building indicates the task of our time, ‘ to lift the midnight sun from the depths of the earth’.
"This house strives to raise people’s awareness of their relationship to nature. The building itself is a hill house, as if it were emerging from the ground, ripping the soil apart, covered with brass scales. Under this earth and metal cover, topped with a crown, stands a superimposed double cupola supported by twelve columns, whose capitals are inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac. … . The reason I like this house is that it expresses everything that I could call a new thought… It is about the life-giving source of light that glares in the centre of the Earth since the Redeemer descended to the inferno, since the redemption of Cain. Depending on our fate, it shines through the Earth’s crust, as our task since Redemption is to create a new Sun and a new Sky. As it did in 1956, the midnight Sun has glared through Eastern Europe this year (1989) as well." I.M.
The Forest Culture Centre
The contemporary Finnish architect Markku Komonen, reflecting on Alvar Aalto’s comment that ‘architecture, painting and sculpture must find ways to manifest the spirit through matter’ has no doubt that Imre Makovecz perfectly understood this idea. ‘He was a true builder, whose hand was able to give a shape to the spirit.’
Lutheran Church, Siofok
In the next days or weeks, we hope to visit a couple of Makovecz’ famous churches, the Lutheran Church in Siofok on Lake Balaton and the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Paks on the Danube, and experience for ourselves the manifestation of spirit through matter in these masterpieces of organic spiritual architecture.
Holy Spirit Church, Paks
Comments