Sacred buildings out of necessity (original) (raw)
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Over the past three decades, the Department for History of Architecture and of Monument Preservation has elaborated architectural surveys of monuments on different scales, from settlements to small-scale historic architectural objects, to train students and to provide research material for larger monument preservation measures. One of the scholarly leaders of this activity was Tamás Guzsik (1947-2002), who published several scientific articles on the methodology of village church research in Hungary, focusing on medieval architecture. By commemorating and evaluating his scientific heritage as a school founding scholar, the paper presents the conceptual opportunities and the extension of some of his principles in a Lutheran church survey programme involving the whole country. The results of this survey can be classified into a typology, which contributes to a better understanding of late Baroque architecture in Hungary and to the typology of Protestant church architecture.
Church in between - Church Architecture in Hungary on the Millennium
The recognized tradition addresses the believers in a contemporary language of forms, and they feel at home again in the churches. The goal of our study is to present these different languages. We consider the self-identification found in historical forms as well as the contemporary way of clear/minimalist architectural formation, manifested in abstraction. In case of contemporary Hungarian churches, the pledge for architectural value has undertaken the continuation of tradition beside the aesthetic demands of the turn of the millennium; this tradition is tightly connected in its identity to the clear conception of liturgical spaces and to the re-definition of Christian space approach on the turn of the millennium. The catholic, calvinist and lutheran churches of Hungary built on the turn of the millennium represent the revival of tradition and the new architectural approaches at the same time. We are focusing on one and only aim: to find the place of human with the help of faith within the rather uncertain values of the turn of the millennium.
Periodica Polytechnica Architecture 2013/1. 1-8.
The majority of the architectural research focusing on Hungarian architecture in the Interwar period, has to date, mainly analysed buildings with regard to international modern architecture and the steps leading to the development of modern church architecture. This research has however, only marginally expanded to include Evangelical Lutheran church architecture. The present article undertakes a complex research on a special building type, which increased between the World Wars and was determined by a geometric centralised ground plan based on both national and international architectural tradition. Lutheran churches built between the World Wars with central ground plans are analysed from both a liturgical perspective, examining the theological aspect and the use of space, and also from the tradition of the ground plans.
Actas del congreso international de arquitecture religiosa contemporánea, 2017
Intensive efforts started in the last decades to get to know the Central and Eastern European and the Hungarian church architecture. In this historically depressed period (1920/1945/1989), church buildings were important identity forming potencies in the life of the Protestant communities newly emerged by the rearrangement of country's borders. The modern architectural principles, the structural and liturgical questions gave opportunity for continuous experimentations in the examined period, which resulted a centralizing tendency between the two world wars. Analysing the Protestant space organization, it is verifiable that these centralizing tendencies with identification character did not pull out from the de-emphasizing church architecture in spite of the historical–political events of World War II. The primary importance of the study is the holistic examination of the Protestant church architecture of the 20th century. The study shows the Protestant Church activity of the period through the two most significant denominations —the Calvinist and the Lutheran church architecture—, thereby providing a typological approach. KEYWORDS Church Architecture, Protestant Typology, Modern Architecture, Centralised Plan, Hungary. RESUMEN En las últimas décadas se han comenzado a hacer intensos esfuerzos para conocer la arquitectura religiosa de la Europa central y oriental, y más en concreto, húngara. En un período históricamente depresivo como 1920/1945/1989, los edificios eclesiales fueron hitos importantes para la creación de una identidad en la vida de las comunidades protestantes, renacidas tras el reordenamiento de las fronteras del país. Los principios arquitectónicos modernos y las cuestiones estructurales y litúrgicas posibilitaron continuas experimentaciones en el período examinado, que generaron una tendencia centralizadora entre las dos guerras mundiales. Analizando la organización del espacio protestante, se puede comprobar cómo estas tendencias centralizadoras con carác-ter identitario se mantuvieron en la arquitectura eclesial a pesar de los acontecimientos histórico-políticos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La importancia primordial del estudio es el examen holístico de la arquitectura eclesial protestante del siglo XX. El estudio muestra la actividad de las Iglesias protestantes del período a través de las dos denominaciones más significativas —la calvinista y la luterana—, proporcionando así un enfoque tipológico.
RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, 2018
Over the last decades intensified efforts have been made to research the 20th century Central and Eastern European, in particular Hungarian sacred architecture. In this era sacred constructions appeared to be a significant identity shaping power for the churches. The interwar period can be clearly distinguished in connection with the trinity of the spread of modern architectural principles, symbolism, and the liturgical and structural issues. With a joint study of these aspects it can be clearly seen that in architecture the international expansion of Modernism, the liturgical movement and the strengthening of the community's aspirations have allowed continuous experimentation, leading to the creation of new church-building principles. This research aims to address these changes not only from the direction of architecture, but by dealing with the new churches built in the era as sources, complementing them with the architecture related parts of the papal and bishop's provisions and of synods’ decisions, as well as with the discussions taking place in the Catholic and architectural press. The paper wants to find out how the official ecclesiastical position was changing from the decisions rejecting the principles and practice of Modern architecture to making provisions that promoted Modern art. The paper examines the delicate balance-policy of the Hungarian Roman Catholic Church in the interwar period, focusing on the issues of modern versus neo-styles and the liturgical renewal.
The process of secularization after Wold War II, and later the seeming easement in the political pressure made serious impact on the new church architectural form language in Hungary. From the 70s, new, unprecedented period began, which can be identified till the change of the regime in 1989. Industrial building materials and structural systems appeared in church constructions. These untraditional church planning methods had significant effects on the forming of the liturgical space and the architectural-aesthetic appearance. The materials and structures which were supported by the socialist era affected an industrial and almost profane atmosphere in the church, yet it was logical to use these elements, because they were the most easily obtainable and cheapest materials in those days. Communities adopted unfavourably the buildings, and they reckon them as temporary solutions. Church construction was really hard during the socialism, and the achievements were gained because of the cohesion of small communities, so these buildings remind us to an unpleasant period. Religious efforts were the results of sober social and clerical acts, and this study aims to highlight these inevitable but sometimes smart architectural answers on the emerged situations. Therefore, the problem can be interpreted by the relation between content and form: as the religious content could make its way to the faithful through the strict filter of socialism. The aging materials and the often not expertly implemented joints require modernization nowadays. Still now, the original sacral content is the same – the essence of the religious faith never changes – but now the faithful often want new forms to demolish the old ones, and it causes new conflicts in the protection of this special built heritage.
Hungarian church architecture of the 20th century accurately reflects the European historical and artistic development processes of the given period. Though this century was typified by its enriching of the region by presenting the values of individuality, the continuity of forms, structures or the craft itself related to foreign connections can be observed at several points. The architectural consensus of buildings designed by architects working in parallel cannot always be derived from the activity of any architectural school. However, it can be noted in general that the spirit of the modern age demanded everywhere the overcoming of the ideals of historism bound by formalities with the help of the liberating facilities of technology, and by presenting their philosophical, aesthetical and economical values. Nevertheless, the intrinsic contradictions of the Modern Movement, which had defined itself only in an unsatisfactory way regarding the matter of tectonics, historic and space context and architectural immanence, were manifested in an apparent break in sacral architecture rooted in liturgical traditions. Though in the third quarter of the century we can find examples of even some industrial-constructivist interpretations of sacral buildings, from the point of view of new social demands and technology the Church’s changed role can be defined only temporarily or incompletely. We also have to take into consideration the iconological hiatus that arose from the modernist repudiation of the spatial and textual symbolic order that had previously existed in historism, in the church architecture of Art Nouveau or in the Hungarian national movement at the turn of the century. The iconological patterns were dissolved in the expressive form, in the avant-garde reduction of liturgical arts and in the space-topography; while the liturgical spaces cleansed of narratives and allegories emphasized the independence of holiness from space and time as well as its direct and universal aspect. Consequently, this purity of sacral spaces was attached to the development of a religious community into an intellectual centre, while the uniqueness of the liturgical word, which was just being born, was connected to the specialty and singleness of individual spaceformation. It may seem rather contradictory that in the decades when the experimental form of modernity spread through Europe, Hungarian church architecture of the period between the two world wars was much more connected to historical archetypes, to ‘common taste’ and to the emphasis on the community creating the role of the church than the Hungarian state architecture of the era after World War II, in which architecture professed social realism, the will of people and communism, but soon performed a complete turn to modernism. After the liquidation of the communist regime, the liturgical architecture of the era had the chance to take inspiration once more from studying the outstanding examples of the movements present before the world war, and to search for continuity along the curve of the broken traditions.
One of the less-known and less researched regions of the Carpathian Basin is Sepsiszék, which as part of Háromszék County, was one of Greater Hungary's southeastern frontier guard areas. After the Reformation, the population of the region became almost exclusively the followers of one of the Protestant tendencies with Calvinism gathering the most members. Due to the location of the area, Sepsiszék and its vicinity – the former territory of the county-is home to Europe's easternmost Protestant communities to this day. Thanks to the unique cultural, religious and social environment, the unique development of local church designs notably enriches the history of Protestant religious architecture. The survey documentation of the area's 32 Calvinist churches along with the schematic analysis of architectural history was carried out during the summer of 2015. 1 The central question of the research was how did the assessed churches accommodate the spatial demands of the new liturgy, and what tendencies can be identified regarding the shaping of the space. The interior layout, galleries, additions to the buildings, the proportions in the floor plans and spatial ratios will be the topics through which these questions will be answered. After tracing the locally observable main characteristics of Protestant spatial formation, similarities with Hungarian and international examples will also be explored.
THE ROLE OF THE CHOIR – ARCHITECTURAL TYPOLOGY OF SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN HUNGARY
Since three centuries a peculiar architectural tradition arisen from Byzantine culture complex - scattered throughout the country - has been eternized. There are Serbian orthodox churches in settlements along the Danube and Baranya County, the most concentrated in the regions of Budapest and Szeged. These churches built mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries are well definable architectural monuments within the Hungarian history of architecture. Their form is typically that of the western middle-towered single-nave baroque churches standardized by Austrian architect Lorenz Landner's designs. Their interiors exhibit, however, the world of decorations of eastern Christian, byzantine sacral spaces. These relics in Hungary are unique for the Serbian orthodox church architecture. In the 18th century an outstanding development of Serbian culture and so of architecture shifted to Hungary. Delivered from strict constraints typical of eastern Orthodox Christian architecture this peculiar byzantine tradition alloyed with baroque animation. This well definable building period provided for further development and historical continuity of Serbian sacral architecture. In our research paper we focus on the main category element of typological formation, the position of choir (pevnica). The specified investigation focusing on architectural planning gives us possibility to underline periodization of development in composing representative church typical of that type in Serbian sacral architecture of 19th century.