The ‘phantom’ can at last materialise

Museum of Hungarian Architecture dreams of a home for itself

MúzeumCafé 48.

If the dreams become a reality with the Liget Budapest project, the Hungarian Architecture Museum will be able to celebrate half a century of existence in its own building. The life of Hungary’s smallest specialist national museum, which currently has a single permanent employee, has certainly been eventful. Despite its precarious existence, it has created a unique collection of hundreds of thousands of objects, about half of which have been processed, including special items such as Béla Lajta’s collection of medieval ceramics from the Middle East, the correspondence of Farkas Molnár and Walter Gropius and the original maquette of Imre Makovecz’s pavilion at the Seville World Expo. Yet despite the best of intentions the collection has never had its own permanent exhibition space. “It’s no secret that for 30 years there was not one minister interested in being actively involved in ensuring for the Hungarian Architecture Museum appropriate exhibition space in its own building,” lamented the institute’s head for many years, László Pusztai, in 1999. The result is that neither the public nor the majority of architects are aware that in 1968 an independent museum was set up to foster the profession’s cultural history and collect documents. However, it would have required several staff members, a permanent location and a professional concept regarding its role. In November 2003 the director of the Hungarian Architecture Museum believed it would have its own home in the Hall of Architecture, to be located in the building of Budapest’s Parisian Grand Department Store, which had returned to state ownership. The profession backed the idea and thus for a while it seemed that the dream, cherished for decades, would at last come true. Then the building was sold. It seems a good omen if a building is designated for a museum, which in the dreams has had numerous homes. The impressive list of such edifices includes a town house in Székesfehérvár, the De la Motte-Beer Mansion in Dísz tér, the Baroque Silk Factory in Óbuda, former synagogues in the capital and numerous potential buildings planned for empty spaces in Budapest’s Castle District. The Dísz tér mansion recently opened as a museum of interior design. The synagogues in Óbuda and Kőbánya are once again places of worship. After decades of neglect the Podmaniczky-Vigyázó Mansion in Budapest’s 17th district has been renovated and functions as an events centre. After costly reconstruction, the Sándor Palace is now the office of Hungary’s president. Thus their fates have taken a turn for the better. Yet the list also contains contrary examples. There is no architecture museum or anything else in the wing of the Zichy Mansion in Óbuda or the Rumbach Sebestyén Street Synagogue, designed by Otto Wagner. They stand empty, as does the Domus furniture retail store. Yet the history had an even more lustrous beginning if we consider the tender call issued in 1904-05 by the Hungarian Engineering and Construction Association for the design of a “free-standing museum of architectural history”. Pál Lipták envisioned a massive, 150-metre-long building with cupola, but the winning design is known only from contemporary publications. If it still exists it could be easy to find, indeed we can suspect where it is – in the collection of the Hungarian National Technical Museum, which was established in 1935 from the impressive material of the Association. The new institute was at first housed in one of the buildings of Budapest’s Southern Railway Station, then after the First Vienna Award (1938) it moved to Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia). Given the lack of an appropriate location, as well as the uncertain international political situation, the collection, which was held in 13 railway carriages, was kept for years at the Kassa railway station. Finally, on 11 November 1943 provincial Hungary’s most significant national museum and most important architectural collection opened in Kassa’s former Financial Palace. It was able to function for over a year, then in January 1945 the Red Army occupied the town and it thus ended up in another country. Today the institute is known as the East Slovak Museum and is of priceless value to Hungarian researchers. In post-1945 Hungary, in particular in the time of Socialist Realism in the 1950s, monument protection was a safe activity for historians of architecture and talented architects, as was industrial design. The National Monuments Inspectorate, established in 1957, not only ensured this in an organised manner, but also looked after the heritage of the National Monuments Committee, which operated up to the 1870s. Of great value is the Committee’s huge archive, which became accessible via the new collection department. No wonder they were the first to embrace the 1968 idea of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ architecture history committee for the establishment of an independent Architecture Museum. The museum was to concentrate on the documents relating to Hungary’s 19th-20th century architecture, as well as related themes, including interior design, urban planning and visual arts. In 1975 the collection was designated as a specialist museum, with specific, thematic tasks, although organisationally it remained tied to the Monuments Inspectorate. It took nearly two decades for the museum to get its own location. In 1987 it moved into a small, renovated Baroque building in Óbuda, though this only provided space for offices, storerooms and research rooms. The following years witnessed the birth of an organisational structure necessary for a (mini) museum, involving art historians and researchers, as well as a photographer and a paper restorer. This situation prevailed for almost 20 years. In 2011, its complete closure was miraculously avoided, but the Hungarian Architecture Museum was left with just one staff member – the director, now downgraded to head of collection. The building was closed, and very quickly not only in theory. The Office for the Protection of Cultural Heritage handed over the building to the Óbuda local authority, which claimed legal ownership. Having closely followed the activities of the museum for decades, György Fekete, president of the Hungarian Arts Academy, was among the first to offer help. Thanks to his lobbying, the Hungarian Architecture Museum came under the auspices of the Liget Budapest project, since when it has participated in the working group developing its plans. The Federation of Hungarian Architects and the Hungarian Architects’ Chamber also got involved in working out the initial, 2012 conception. The rest is still not history – as a result of the competition, which closed in 2014, the museum building is to be designed by KÖZTI. Final completion of the professional aspect of the project is still in the pipeline.