The Visegrád Camps – The Beginnings
In his childhood, he intended to become a painter and drew extensively, but, on his mother’s suggestion, a landscape designer, he chose architecture, a profession that is partly artistic and partly engineering. After graduating from Táncsics Mihály Secondary Grammar School, designed by turn-of-the-century architects Károly Kós and Dénes Györgyi, he and his friends at the Budapest University of Technology became interested in an intellectual movement extending beyond the curriculum: organic architecture and its prominent Hungarian representative, Imre Makovecz. Even as a Budapest resident, he was a regular participant in the architectural and musical programmes organised within the walls of the halls of residence at Bercsényi 28–30 and the ‘samizdat-like’ newspaper editing in the famous Room 410. Starting from his first year, he was involved in the organisation and construction work of the nascent Visegrád Camp, which, according to his own testimony, was a defining experience in the further shaping of his career: “The architectural and intellectual movement that I became acquainted with here is still the driving force behind my actions and work today. The Visegrád Camp directly led to the Makona Makona Small Cooperative, the Kós Károly Association, and the Triskell office.” In many cases, getting to know each other during the process of learning through building, or the organisation of the work process that developed through natural selection within the student group (which was also competitive), proved to be more important than the completed work itself. In the words of the originator of the idea, Imre Makovecz, describing the atmosphere of the camps: “The mine yard became the location for the implementation of plans that won competitions and the camp itself. Here, one could learn the elementary rules of co-existence, the drama of eating, work, love, and friendships, and the joy and pride of work accomplished through shared will. But here, too, one could learn to build from plans at the Vác Ferry crossing and on Mogyoró Hill. And here, one could learn the difference between the counter-selective madness of the socialist, compulsory apple-picking camp and the indisputable system of values based on natural selection.”
MAKONA
After completing his university studies and as Hungary’s political transition approached, he became a member of the newly established MAKONA Small Cooperative. Its founders, Imre Makovecz and Ervin, both recipients of the Kossuth Prize, gathered several young architecture students and recent graduates around them to help manage their rapidly increasing number of private commissions. Their design work focused primarily on revitalising small rural settlements. In designing village halls, community-building extensions, and land-use plans, he learned the full architectural design process. Due to significant staff expansion, the organisation was eventually divided into cooperating yet professionally and financially independent offices, all housed within a shared building. Even today, colleagues belonging to the Makona Association collaborate on larger design projects. He is also a founding member of the Károly Kós Association, established by architects, urban planners, contractors, and anthroposophical engineers; he remains an active organiser at its events.
Triskell
He established an independent office in 1990 together with two friends, Attila Turi and József Siklósi. Drawing on Celtic mythology, they chose the triskelion as their emblem, a good-luck symbol expressing the unity of three forces and a rotating motion around a single centre. In Brittany, where it still appears as a decorative motif today, the symbol denotes the spiral of life–dynamism–enthusiasm: fire, water, and air intertwine to nourish the static earth located at their core. Since 1996, the office has been based in the ‘Kecskevár’ in Óbuda-Újlak. Although the team has changed over the years, its principal activity has remained constant: the collaborative planning process involved in the reconstruction of family homes, public buildings, and neighbourhoods. Alongside engineers, the office regularly collaborates with colleagues from community culture and community development, since architects must address the challenges of civil society alongside those of the built environment. From the beginning of his career, his role as a chief architect has also been of major importance to him. Within this position – specific to Hungary – a charismatic architectural adviser can improve the environment through guidance, example, and close symbiosis with the settlement. In his youth, he became acquainted with the leading specialists in community culture, Pál Beke, Tamás Varga, and Ferenc Péterfi, from whom he learned the collaborative planning method. The essence of his vocation lies in embodying both the role of keeper and guardian.
Csenger – Chief Architect
A once ageing and neglected village gradually transformed into a town and later a district centre on an uncontrolled periphery, where outsiders arriving from afar created new value against the current through decades of shared effort. In 1987, at the recommendation of Imre Makovecz, the town’s leaders invited him to serve as chief architect, entrusting him with shaping the settlement’s character through the buildings he designed, granting him a voice in selecting designers, and involving him in the development of the local building regulations. After extensive discussions, surveys, and analyses, he proposed as a first step the ‘explosion’ of the existing plot structures in the town centre by introducing a continuous, unfenced row of buildings. Inspired by his ideas, the Árpád-era [period of the first Hungarian kings, 11th–13th century] church was restored to its architectural prominence, and within a short time, a central institutional zone woven through with internal walkways emerged. Thanks to this continuity, present-day developments continue to follow the original concept for settlement development. Meanwhile, the Romanian–Hungarian ‘Iron Curtain’ [the heavily guarded state border between socialist Hungary and socialist Romania before 1989] disappeared, and the opening of the international border enabled the organically designed building complex – planned jointly with his colleagues and harmonising with the older building stock – to fulfil the role of a regional centre. He received similar commissions chiefly in small Swabian villages [ethnic German communities in Hungary] or within the metropolitan agglomeration, yet such an intensive working relationship could not be established elsewhere due to the lack of communal cooperation. In 2012, the National College of Chief Architects honoured him with the Chief Architect of the Year Award at its annual conference held in Makó, recognising “his quarter-century of high-quality and consistent work as chief architect, his committed attitude towards small settlements, his perseverance, and his active role in professional education and public life.” Since 2014, he has also held a chief architect position in Makó.
Petőfi Sándor Primary School and Cultural Centre in Csenger
In a settlement once deemed destined for complete decline, the building designated during the 1980s redevelopment of the town centre became his first major independent commission as lead architect. Its spatial organisation is unique: by adopting the acute angle at which two old streets intersect, the structure encloses a landscape-like atrium. The row of houses that once stood on the site was evoked on the main façade as a tribute to the master builders of the past. An even greater challenge than the design itself was the high-quality realisation – within the modest available budget – of building forms and construction techniques never before seen there, led by his friend Miklós Farkas, who was also at the beginning of his career. This building-organism, with its inward-leaning columns and distinctive roof structure, shares a birthday with his eldest son; the two have grown and matured side by side. The public building, which has become a civic forum for the town, was named after Imre Makovecz following his death. Its imposing main entrance was complemented by a bust of the Master, paying homage to the leading figure behind the organic architectural revitalisation that reshaped the settlement’s appearance.
Community Buildings
Throughout his career, his principal focus has been on designing buildings, public spaces, and gathering places for small communities in border regions. These works typically define the visual identity of the settlements: they face the main squares, marked by unmistakable domed or towered entrances. After an often strikingly powerful architectural introduction, visitors enter elegant central spaces, over which a dramatic roof structure rises, articulated with skylights and complex geometries. In the words of his colleague and friend Attila Turi: “Csernyus draws on the forces that shape rock formations; his walls and cliff-like pillars seem to grow out of the ground. The influence of tectonics can be felt in his layered, storytelling façades – the sense of detachment from the earth, the effort inherent in the birth of a world formed from matter. Over this heavy world, he places a roof that is light, ribbed, creature-like: at times resembling a shell, at other times a boat.” Despite these shared characteristics, each building posed unique challenges. In Bonyhád, for instance, a prefabricated town hall destined for demolition had to be remodelled – during ongoing municipal operations – through a building envelope and an additional floor. In Üröm, on the site of a former royal vineyard, he had to expand a school complex on a confined plot in the centre of a largely featureless suburban Swabian community, easing the social tensions between newcomers and long-settled residents. Similarly, in Makó, the originally corridor-based, prefabricated school building on Kálvin Square – constructed without an atrium – underwent a profound transformation on a restricted schoolyard, all while ensuring uninterrupted operation. The organic, two-storey addition, joined by a curving atrium, created a new layer of urban development by shifting property boundaries and converting a former side street into a public space. The free-standing columns, detached from the external wall, contribute to a curious metamorphosis between nature and the built environment through the large window openings. At the heart of the adaptable interior stands a structure that is at once petrified and alive, serving as a foundational pillar of the intellectual renewal that also took place within the educational sphere. He handled with equal confidence situations in which entirely new complexes had to be created on empty ground – such as the Leisure Centre, Camping Site, and the István–Gizella twin belfry erected in Csesztreg to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of the Hungarian Conquest in 895. There, the interwoven tower bases give distant emphasis to the ring of camping buildings constructed above Neolithic house remains. He also had to form a dignified entrance for visitors among the nondescript, ageing industrial buildings of the Herend porcelain manufactory. As a result of genuine teamwork, his sole project won through an open competition, raised such significant ideas that the astonishing transformation of the formerly unremarkable village had to be presented at a world-class level – achieved through the use of gypsum, chamotte, and porcelain, and by integrating the expertise of the ceramic artist Imre Schrammel.
Family Homes
He considers the design of family homes to be an especially important task, though in his view, this field in Hungary is on a par with football and cars – that is, everyone believes they understand it better than the professionals. Instead of pursuing fashionable trends, however, he strives to preserve and pass on the centuries-old system of values even to those clients who deliberately wish to build what they consider good based on other examples. For this often lengthy process, he invests considerable time and energy in thoroughly understanding the clients’ habits and lifestyle, and, in most cases, earns their trust. In an increasingly uniform world, the key to achieving the frequently requested personalised, tailored outcome is not only the meticulous preparation of plans but also the architect’s presence during construction, which allows the building to evolve through shared decisions and enables architect and client to experience together the drama of the building process. Across nearly every region of the country, smaller and larger newly built or remodelled homes serve the lives of families with whom he collaboratively shaped these spaces. He regards regular maintenance – and, when needed, extensions – as essential, encouraging clients not to treat their homes as commodities to be bought and sold. His family houses, unmistakable in appearance yet homely in atmosphere, include, for example, the Kasy House in Budapest, the Nagy House in Kosd, and the Molnár House in Üröm. On a slightly larger scale, he displayed the same refined sense of proportion and architectural gesture in articulating his apartment building in Óbuda, as well as in the stable and farmstead centre in Kaposhomok, designed for a close family friend he had met during the construction of the Hungarian Pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo. Their brickwork and traditional timber structures testify to a precise mastery of craftsmanship. In the increasingly placeless residential parks spreading through the metropolitan agglomeration, he is rarely commissioned to design homes; the projects that reach him more often involve additions and extensions to old-village, protected rows of houses.
Waldorf
He first encountered the spiritual movement of anthroposophy during his university years, learning about the teachings of its founder, Rudolf Steiner and his freely shaped architectural works. His understanding deepened considerably when, upon enrolling his own children, he became a Waldorf parent, later a member of the school’s board of trustees, and an engaged practitioner of human-centred education as an epoch instructor of architectural history and visual culture at the upper-secondary level. Through the Waldorf method of ‘learning through discovery’, he places equal emphasis on nurturing physical, emotional, and spiritual capacities while simultaneously building a community. When he was commissioned to redesign the Óbuda Waldorf School, it felt natural to him – within the framework of a communal design process – to create an environment that keeps the inner vitality of children warm and alive, where pupils’ own work and ideas can be continually integrated over the years into the corridors or appear in the schoolyard. The dynamically undulating spatial experience of the upstairs eurythmy room also inspires those moving together in a shared rhythm. Although the large-scale development plans could only be realised in part, even without the subsequent phases the building, viewed from the outside, leaves no sense of incompleteness.
Designs
Alongside the many completed buildings, his career is also marked by unrealised dreams, ideas left on the drawing board – such as the Waldorf Office Building in Budapest and the College in Nyíregyháza – by half-finished architectural fragments (the restaurant in Kám and the kindergarten in Csoma), and by unpaid conceptual sketches. This is likely linked to his creative method: after the initial enthusiasm, the energy invested in on-site inspections and the production of dynamic mood drawings and freehand sketches, the process often stalls within Hungary’s system of architectural competitions and bureaucracy. He simply did not grow up in a world where investors first demand construction-cost estimates without any drawings. Even his scale-accurate sketches – created according to the principle of ‘one building–one idea’ – frequently change, sometimes several times, before the building reaches completion. Based on his practical experience, he can only approximate figures when clients ask for estimates. His dense, colourful lines require collaborative interpretation from colleagues and clients alike, for he does not copy precedents but rather internalises the atmospheres and situations of each site. Already in his youth, he discovered the cultural paths of the Irish–Celtic–Hibernian tradition, and since then, he has sought the suppressed Irish sources of Eurasian culture. By combining this interest with a thorough understanding of each site, his traditionally minded yet sensitive approach allows him to adapt his designs to local scales and customs. The cultural renewal of peripheral regions is especially important to him, as is cooperation grounded in friendship, mutual understanding, and genuine attention to one another. The relative lack of competition entries in his career reflects his constant involvement in development work. Yet his commissions have at times included unconventional tasks, such as the House of Birth, the Living Open-Air Museum, the Eco-Academy, the Terrarium, the Fairy Garden, or the Memorial Park of Survival (Megmaradás emlékpark). These projects, devoid of clear precedents, truly allow his imagination free rein: the elemental forces of nature may shape the projecting or overhanging roofs pressed upon megalithic building components. Alongside the well-proportioned openings of his upward-reaching towers and whitewashed façades, angels, plants, and verses may appear at the articulated entrance points. His thick, solid walls are often clad in stone or brick, reinforcing tectonic impressions, local flavour, or a sense of closeness to nature. Characteristic of his designs is the introduction of filtered upper light into central spaces and the creation of expressive spatial experiences in his emblematic works. Yet his architectural repertoire also includes solidarity, simplicity, and complete rehabilitation where required – for example, in post-flood reconstruction (in Bereg and Devecser) or in the restoration of historic buildings such as the Szuhányi Manor House in Csenger and the Jékey Manor House in Géberjén.
Teaching and Building Camps
Alongside his architectural and community work, he has been teaching architecture students since the age of forty within the Organic Architecture course at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, together with Attila Turi. On a weekly basis, he uses his direct lecturing style, enriched with expressive visual material and personal stories. Through his travels, he has seen much of the world’s architectural heritage, and his engaging lectures encourage students to take on boldly experimental design projects. His fundamental expectations are broad cultural literacy and a genuine intellectual curiosity. He seeks to draw his students into his anecdotal accounts, ensuring that the transmission of experiential knowledge between master and apprentice is not one-directional. Reviving the spirit of the nomadic-generational camps once held in Visegrád and Tokaj, he organises building camps every summer, where shared work, group cohesion, and the experience of activity itself take precedence over the physical object – often created from natural materials using traditional construction techniques and frequently allowed to decay back into the landscape, forming an organic unity with it. Alongside the day-long physical labour, evening lectures also provide opportunities for intellectual development. Parallel to, and sometimes integrated with, his university teaching, he has directed since 2007 the Travelling School (Vándoriskola) operated by the Kós Károly Association, and since 2009, he has given lecture series at Waldorf secondary schools, thereby ensuring a steady stream of younger generations and providing postgraduate training opportunities for emerging professionals alongside their daily work. Modelled on medieval guilds, the movement of apprentices between masters culminates in a diploma project and the presentation of a completed building, marking the apprentice’s transition to a master over the years. This recurring three-year cycle of discovery, learning, and teaching ensures renewal and preserves the human ‘language’ of architecture through the self-sustaining cooperation of the member organisations.
Multidisciplinary Artistic Work
After turning fifty, his theoretical and research-oriented activities became increasingly prominent. Since 2012, together with festival director László Horváth and his friend, composer Ferenc Kiss, he has revived the symbolism of the ‘Seven Towers’ (Héttorony) within the framework of a festival held in various cities of the Carpathian Basin. This motif was originally evoked by Imre Makovecz in the Hungarian Pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo; therefore, the festival’s closing event is held each year on the Master’s birthday, paying tribute to his architectural and intellectual legacy. As the saying goes, architecture is ‘frozen music’, the synthesis of the arts; accordingly, he curates classical photography exhibitions, architectural light installations, and video projections, combining them with musical, literary, or movement-based performances held in auditoriums and public halls. He typically creates while listening to music – a habit he attributes to the alternative artistic communities he encountered in school. His growing affinity for organic architecture is perhaps part of the same trajectory: a movement that, increasingly overshadowing the Bauhaus, places life and the human being at its centre as a peripheral yet vital branch of modern architectural discourse. As a natural continuation of this intellectual heritage, he serves on the board of trustees of the Makovecz Imre Foundation, where, alongside collecting, organising, systematising, and documenting the oeuvre, he regards constant public engagement and the safeguarding of cultural heritage as self-evident tasks – achieved through exhibitions, conferences, and guided tours. In addition to identifying and authenticating works belonging to the oeuvre, he is also involved in advancing the realisation of unbuilt Makovecz designs and in ensuring the protection and expert restoration of endangered existing buildings. This activity is supported by the Department of Art Theory of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, which elected him as a corresponding member in 2015.
On the Architecture and Artistic Work of Lőrinc Csernyus
Lőrinc Csernyus is not a typical graduate of the Budapest University of Technology; he is far more a builder, artist, community developer, researcher, and adventurer. He avoids conventional solutions in every sphere of life, and this is precisely what lends his architectural organisms their distinctive character. Although he often encounters houses built to standardised designs, he transforms them with his own ideas to reflect the tastes and identity of the community. His clients use and maintain their new homes with pride, and the friendships formed during the process endure for many years. He draws by hand, writes with a fountain pen, and listens to Celtic folk music; yet he is a modern, worldly creator who leads with open eyes and photographs extensively. With remarkable pedagogical sensitivity, he weaves his experiences into the knowledge he has acquired and passes it on to those he deems ready to receive it. His friends come from the most diverse corners of the artistic world, and his clients, too, are often far from ordinary; his works radiate a sense of joy. He begins the design process with grand, generous gestures and guides his colleagues with assurance. Instinctive by nature, he values above all an education grounded in elegance. He believes in the revitalisation of peripheral regions, the continuity of tradition, the development of rural communities – and, despite being a resident of the capital, he has dedicated his creative career to these aims.
[2016]
– the author is an architect –