János Golda is a defining figure within the Hungarian architectural community. Alongside the houses and competitions that make up his oeuvre, his presence in various professional communities has likewise exerted a remarkable influence. Whether we trace his career chronologically – beginning with his organisational work at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the Bercsényi Halls of Residence, which led to the founding of the Miskolci Műhely (Miskolc Workshop) and the Kollektív Ház (Collective House), then to his activity in the Master School of the Association of Hungarian Architects and to his work as chief architect for the Piarist Order – or whether we survey the country geographically, reading his critiques and conference papers and witnessing his empathy on diploma juries from the architecture programme in Győr, via the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, to Debrecen – we clearly perceive an attitude that is open in many directions, drawn to new questions and the multitude of contemporary ideas, yet classical and firm in its system of values.

Choosing a profession

Living in communities and reflecting on them was, in all likelihood, one of his foundational experiences: he grew up as the eldest of six boys in the inner districts of Budapest, in Ferencváros and Józsefváros. His parents were of Swabian origin; his father walked back to Hungary on foot from deportation in Germany after the war [forced relocation of ethnic Germans from Hungary after 1945], so that he could complete his engineering studies and resume the life he had imagined before the war. His mother, a deeply religious woman, insisted that her sons should receive a religious education: she enrolled them at the Piarist Secondary Grammar School in Pest, on Mikszáth Kálmán Square. The spirit of Piarist education has shaped Golda’s entire life. He speaks of it as follows in a monograph currently in preparation: “Sooner or later, a genuine commitment develops in the majority of Piarist pupils. What we take with us is the sense that one should pursue one’s chosen profession as well as possible, and immerse oneself in it as a complete human being. It does not matter what you become, but you must stand your ground there as well as you possibly can. Responsibility. That is what I received from them, too.” In Piarist education, special emphasis is placed on the teaching of the natural sciences; Golda achieved his most outstanding results in mathematics and initially planned to continue his university studies in that direction. Two key moments can be identified in his turn towards architecture. At the end of primary school, a brief newspaper item caught his attention – a call for a public architectural competition, apparently for a site on Margaret Island in Budapest. The brief appealed to him, made him think, and prompted him to prepare a design: he construed it as a task in which the abstract desire to “do something great with our lives” might be realised. The decisive experience for his application to the Faculty of Architecture was a visit to an architectural office in his fourth year of secondary school. The studio visit was organised by his class form teacher, István Jelenits, with the express intention of helping the pupils choose a career, as a result, Golda changed his mind overnight and revised his application, turning from mathematics towards architectural studies.

University years

In the architectural education he completed in the mid–1970s at the University of Technology, he received neither a defining mentor nor substantial practice in architectural design; the most important experience of his university years was community life. At the Bercsényi Halls of Residence, he edited a student journal, served as class secretary, and energetically organised various programmes – discussions, excursions, film screenings. Influenced by foreign journals and conversations, he became sharply critical of university teaching, finding the dominant approach empty and formalist; he missed the communal energies of the movements of ’68 and the emergence of fresh lines of thought, including a concern for place and meaning. He defended his diploma project in 1977 at the Department of Urban Planning; the topic was the planning of the Káposztásmegyer housing estate, on which, by his own account, the greatest impact was exerted by Tamás Meggyesi’s course in systems theory. “I was excited by the idea of being able to design an entire urban district, of being able to think about the structure of a broader territory, to define the pattern of the built fabric, the network of roads, the form of the buildings. I was interested in everything from public transport to community functions, from housing blocks to individual flats.”

Early career

As during his university years, so in choosing his first job, living and working in a community took precedence. He did not set himself an architectural task, an office, or a location as a primary goal; instead, he sought work guided by the desire that the core of the cohort that had welded together during his studies remain together and find employment within a single company. A group of some thirty people wanted to work together and therefore sought a provincial town that would take them in. In late–1970s Hungary, Miskolc was such a place, for the rapid pace of industrialisation had led to a serious shortage of architects. In the late 1970s, some 25,000 people were employed at the Lenin Metallurgical Works and the Diósgyőr Machine Factory. Owing to forced, rapid industrialisation, housing estates and public buildings were constructed in large numbers in and around Miskolc. Északterv (Northern Design Institute), a large socialist design enterprise, was a place where work was carried out on an industrial scale. Yet the presence of the architect Antal Plesz transmitted the finest modernist tradition – the architecture of István Nyíri, László Lauber, and Ferenc Kiss – via Csaba Bodonyi and István Ferencz. János Golda joined Északterv in 1977, and after just six months’ work, he was engaged in independent design tasks. His first major work, the Roman Catholic church in Vaja, is jointly signed with his wife, Ágnes Thoma. By 1980, he had already designed a 330-flat housing estate, together with a 16-classroom school, supermarket, kindergarten and crèche for the northern district of Eger, on Ráchegy.

Collective House – collective mindset

In addition to his design tasks, in 1979 he became one of the founders, later residents and organisers of the Miskolc Collective House – in effect a highly successful forerunner of today’s increasingly widespread cohousing projects. The Collective House was the architectural transposition of the professional community that had formed at the university; the idea arose collectively, and the architectural plans were by Csaba Bodonyi. The framework for this ideal place imagined for the community was provided by the social reality of socialism: its basis was the standard panel flat, the 54-square-metre unit that ‘everyone was entitled to’. He reflects on this in an interview:

“It was a curiosity within the system because, although we took the standard plans into account, we defined our needs ourselves as a community. We took the standard flat size as a base, but we were determined to build the house as a community. Two times seven flats were built, for 28–30 people. Everyone contributed 18 square metres from their own flat to the common area, so the flats became smaller by this amount. We minimised private living space to a tiny (12 m² per person) bedroom, a kitchenette and a bathroom (these could be combined into pairs). The added square metres were turned into a multi-purpose community room, serving as a play area, workspace, recreation space, party room, television room, child-rearing space, and Sunday lunch venue. There was a guest room, a music room, a pottery workshop, a DIY workshop, a laundry and a guest WC block. We created a roof terrace and a garden. The building still operates today, but in a different way, because after the system change, the flats could be bought, which contradicted the design's logic and the community's interests. The Collective House functioned in line with the original idea for ten years – the first five years could be called euphoric, the second five those of consolidation, and then signs of disintegration appeared, which privatisation finally destroyed.”

A fascinating and important city-scale production of the Miskolc Workshop was the joint design submitted to the international competition Warsaw Confrontation in 1981 – essentially an urban typology, whose intellectual leader once again was Csaba Bodonyi, although the entire community took an active part in it. While Golda does not consider himself a defining designer on this project, it is nevertheless important to mention it to understand this phase of his career, as it clearly demonstrates the Miskolc ethos of collective thinking about the city and the impact of the postmodern era. For the town of Góra Kalwaria on the Vistula, they outlined the concept of a self-developing city. They proposed a perimeter-block fabric whose variable façade typology worked by analogy to children’s flip books. The scheme simultaneously preserved the existing urban structure, created order, and allowed for variability. The entry was a success. Some of the few who know it detect in it the thinking of Christopher Alexander; others – such as Miklós Sulyok – regard it as a precursor of critical regionalism. It is certainly not a mistake to discern within it the life-view of a young architectural workshop that thought in terms of community and historical continuity, yet was open to individuality and novelty. It can certainly be said of János Golda’s oeuvre that already in its early phase, he was fundamentally motivated by reflection on the spatial conditions of harmonious communal functioning, and, within that, by the potential duality of organic and planned processes of development.

Master School: urban community

Alongside the Miskolc Workshop, the Master School, like for so many Hungarian architects, also exerted a decisive influence on his way of thinking and attitude to architecture. To this, we must add that for János Golda, not only the study years between 1980 and 1982 were exciting, but his presence as a mentor from 1988 onwards has become increasingly important. In line with his personality, the Master School became a community in his life, of which he, too, was an organiser; he supports its openness and multidisciplinary interests with great energy and constant personal involvement.

From the perspective of his oeuvre, it is worth noting the competition design he prepared for his application to the School: the Mindennapi Hősök tere (lit. Square of Everyday Heroes) for Heroes’ Square in Budapest, which reinterpreted and reframed a space central to Hungarian identity.

“In my Master School admission project in 1980, I dealt with Heroes’ Square. We had to design a Csontváry Museum in the City Park, which I imagined beneath the square. Extending the Millennium Monument, I continued the colonnade to Dózsa György Road, right up to the building line of the museums, thus creating a more enclosed, amphitheatre-like space with long, tiered seating. This was the Square of Everyday Heroes. The essential point was that the city should be looking at itself there. Beneath the side of the square at the Museum of Fine Arts, I placed the Csontváry Museum, which was diagonally crossed by the Millennium Underground Railway. Part of the exhibition was that the train would occasionally thunder past along a glazed section of the corridor. I surrounded the entire area with a low stone wall, and a unified paving tied the whole together as a podium, turning the two museum buildings, the Millennium Monument and the Square of Everyday Heroes, into exhibits.” (monograph)

It is important to remember here that Golda is fundamentally an urban person who grew up in a densely built, stimulus-rich environment; the fabric of the city, the meanings and memories it holds, and the question of identity are constant concerns for him.

Piarist Secondary Grammar School in Szeged – from postmodern to Hans van der Laan

His first major work after the Miskolc period was the competition design for the Piarist Secondary Grammar School, halls of residence, monastery, and church in Szeged, which he prepared in 1995 together with Attila Madzin. Both the winning conceptual strategy and the complex, as it was built in several stages (1996–2000), were conceived essentially as a city. As already indicated, the organic development of a city and the architectural interventions within it are central questions in his oeuvre. The key to the Szeged project is that the construction process is tied together by an imagined narrative. What would happen if the Piarists arrived in Szeged now, bringing with them their own historical past and, of course, the Order's operational logic? How should this peripheral site, which was given to them instead of their former central building, be populated? Under the leadership of István Jelenits, the Order announced an invited competition to find the optimal solution; the complex design brief was drawn up by the then diocesan architect, Tamás László, and the chair of the jury was the architect Ferenc Török. The invited architects included leading figures such as György Major, Gábor Turányi, and György Koczor, alongside János Golda. The proposal by Golda and Madzin conceives the building process as a sequence: it establishes a hierarchy of importance among the different functions, starting with the secondary school, where they saw the Piarist Order’s apostolic mission primarily realised. This fictive narrative of ‘moving in’ is inspired by history and can also be understood as a model of organic urban growth.

The school is therefore built first, immediately defining the central space. Two meanings can be discovered in the interpretation of this place: we may think of it as a piazza, a lively public space inhabited by the community, a type of space brought to Hungary as a model by the Baroque Order arriving from Italy. If we consider its sacral character, then it is also the cloistered courtyard, the quadrum enclosed by a cloister in a monastery. When building began, a tree was planted in the middle; it has since grown into a spreading feature that reinforces the sacred character of the place both as a natural phenomenon and as a vertical accent.

The entrance hall, refectory, gymnasium, and library define this space, while the last element to be built was the church. Its tower, which had appeared in the competition as a separate, campanile-like structure, was finally designed as rising directly from the nave. If we examine the individual elements of the complex, we can see the focus shift from initial stylistic meanings to a more reductive architectural form. Rather than historical stylistic references, we increasingly perceive an aspiration whose clearest model may be found in the oeuvre of the Dutch Benedictine monk Hans van der Laan.

The construction of the Szeged Piarist Centre thus coincides with a transformation in architectural thinking. Instead of postmodern meanings, allusions to styles, and the related symmetrical compositions, an increasingly concentrated approach emerges that seeks to present the contemporary moment in asymmetrical compositions; in a world saturated with aggressive visual impulses, it finds reassurance in design logics that strive for substantiality and expression with a strong, essential character.

Life Sciences Building and Library, University of Debrecen – taut order

The work in János Golda’s oeuvre that has so far received the greatest recognition is the Life Sciences Building and Library on the Nagyerdő campus of the University of Debrecen, completed in 2006, for which his architectural partner was Gábor Szenderffy. In the photographs most often published of the building, the dominant visual feature is a monumental gate motif designed by the artist János Megyik at the architects’ request. The success of the perforated bronze portal is explained in part by its uniqueness and special character, typical of great works by outstanding artists; yet a crucial element of this positive reception is also the work’s position and its relationship to the two buildings. As we have so often emphasised in connection with Golda’s thinking, individual buildings can be understood by reading them back from their urban context. To grasp this university research centre, we must return to the city centre of Debrecen, to the Reformed College of Debrecen, which is the point of departure for the city’s intellectual life and for the university itself. In physical terms, the axis of the university campus aligns with a radial avenue and derives its momentum from this inner urban origin. The main building of the campus, the monumental historicist structure on the avenue’s axis (Flóris Korb, 1936), was conceived as part of Klebelsberg’s school-building programme [a major interwar Hungarian educational investment scheme]. It is a large-scale work that commands respect and authority. The main building not only sets the scale but reinforces the pre-existing axis; the other buildings on the campus (by Tibor Mikolás, 1960s–70s) are understood as a continuation of this city-scale ensemble. A fundamental consideration in Golda and Szenderffy’s concept is the relationship to this axis.

Another difficulty in the international competition for the new research building lay in the programme's complexity: 150 specialised laboratories and training spaces had to be accommodated within a centre formed by the integration of three universities. The winning scheme by Golda and Szenderffy was presumably chosen because of the taut logic of its flexible matrix layout, which allows the various research projects to use the laboratories in highly diverse ways. The departments’ wings are arranged like the teeth of a comb on a longitudinal block; the internal façade facing the campus forms a monumental colonnade, bounded by a glass plane. The dominant material of the building is exposed concrete – an honest and forceful presence, which, according to the designers, is a contemporary reinterpretation of the main building’s plinth. The library is treated as a separate building, arranged parallel to the research block. Two concrete-and-glass cubes thus face one another, eye to eye. While the rational composition impressed the competition’s architectural jury, it did not convince the mayor of Debrecen, who asked for the architectural form to be ‘humanised’. The use of exposed concrete in particular, and of cubic forms associated with modernism in general, is indeed a difficult issue for contemporary architecture, as their perception among the lay public is unfortunately negative. Pitched-roof ‘house-like houses’, brick architecture and narrative-based architecture usually enjoy a more positive public image. However, in reworking the Debrecen building, Golda and Szenderffy did not choose this path; instead, they proposed the insertion of a large symbolic gesture – the gate – attached to the library building, reinforcing the central axis already mentioned. This gate is also an autonomous work of art and, as noted, represents a unique gesture complementing the raw, rational architectural form beside it. Its special power derives from its position. As a gate, it opens worlds to one another and marks relationships which, both spatially and intellectually, connect the present of the campus to its past.

Piarist Centre, Budapest – building and surroundings

Another outstanding work in his oeuvre, which has attracted international publicity and tremendous interest, is the formation of the Piarist Centre in Budapest at the foot of the Elizabeth Bridge. Most inhabitants of Budapest knew the building as part of Eötvös Loránd University, those who were young in the 1960s and 70s as the venue of the University Stage (Egyetemi Színpad), and city-dwellers in general as a block wedged between the inner stretch of Váci Street and Március 15 Square, while the oldest generation still remembers that before the Second World War, this Neo-Baroque palace was the main centre of Piarist education, where some of the finest teachers of the age taught. Here, too, an iconic element is a gate, which in its present state opens the inner city towards the Danube. It was a particularly fortunate conjuncture in the life of the city that Március 15 Square and the Piarist block that dominates it could be renewed at the same time and, in part, in a coordinated way. The square was designed by the firm Város-Teampannon Kft, led by Lajos Koszorú; the building by M-Teampannon, with János Golda working together with Zoltán Kovács and Erzsébet Mészáros. The intellectual unity and high quality of the two interventions were recognised by the jury of the 2015 Architectural Merit Award of the Budapest Chamber of Architects, which commended the project in the ‘Nominated’ category.

The building’s transformation posed numerous dilemmas for both the client and the architect. Together with the older generation of Piarists, Golda argued for returning to the site: he attributed symbolic importance and identity-shaping power to its location, yet, alongside the interests of the Order, he also considered what he regarded as the likely perspectives of the city-dwellers. His important insight was that filling the building with cultural content could beneficially shape a city centre which had largely been appropriated by commerce and tourism. Today, the Piarist block is a lively urban venue. This is underpinned by the architectural decision not to treat the building solely as an educational facility, but to develop a cultural mix within it. On the lower storeys, the building opens towards the city; with retail and catering functions, it draws people inside, and radiates intellectual life outwards. The school begins on a raised level, while the monastery occupies the uppermost floors. The grand and surprising gesture of the architectural concept is the insertion of a large ‘box’ into the ill-proportioned inner courtyard. Its lower two storeys are intended to house cultural functions, while the upper two storeys contain the secondary grammar school gymnasium; on its roof, an open-air schoolyard is formed, framed by views of the huge building at a far more homely scale.

Piarist Vocational School, Göd – environmentally conscious design (together with András Farkas, Csaba Buella, Tamás László, Bálint Kertessy, and László Radnóczi)

The various commissions carried out for the Piarist Order could be listed at length, for as a diocesan architect, János Golda constantly reflects on the possibility of renovating and using monasteries, churches, and schools, working with various collaborators (often former students). The vocational secondary school on the banks of the Danube in Göd, however, is inescapable for two reasons. On the one hand, it clearly demonstrates that the Order’s building projects are not realised as part of any form of elite education; rather, they arise from practical necessity, and the architectural solutions likewise spring from reflection on what is essential and needed.

On the other hand, the formation of this vocational school includes fine examples of the aspiration towards energy-conscious solutions and an ecological approach. The carpentry and stone-masonry workshops are housed in a long building that almost follows the line of the Danube, set back from both the public road and the protected environmental area. Since industrial activities also take place within, the building turns inward and, for instance, deliberately does not open towards the Danube; the workshop zone in front of the building is to be screened from the outside world, both visually and acoustically. Respect for the environment is evident in the pattern of windows on the riverside façade, which is shaped by the natural rhythm of the existing trees. On the inner courtyard façade of the two-storey, white-rendered building, a row of timber columns runs; this elongated porch leads to the entrance at the ‘hinge’ of the building. The lowest storey of the three-storey building is the basement, which houses the noisiest industrial activities, including the mechanical carpentry workshop. A technological curiosity here is the natural lighting of this level, achieved partly through a sunken courtyard on the south side and skylights cut into the slab beneath the porch, and partly through light wells running down from the roof. In the physical and intellectual environment of the former villa once inhabited by the family of the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, the school in Göd continues to expand, constantly adapting to needs and to the ever-changing regulations governing vocational training. In 2010, the building received a Saint-Gobain Trophy for its sustainable architectural solutions.

Design Centre, former bus terminal on Erzsébet Square – respect for the values of the past (together with Attila Madzin)

Alongside the creation of new works, building refurbishments also play a major role in János Golda’s oeuvre. Among the Piarist projects mentioned, several reconstructions and reinterpretations are already evident. Of his interventions in a heritage context, an especially interesting example is the conversion of the former bus terminal on Erzsébet Square in Budapest into the Design Terminal. The design by Golda and Attila Madzin won an architectural competition in which the complete rebuilding of the original structure by István Nyíri (1948–49) had been one of the options.

Their thinking about the building took them from an open-plan approach to one that respected the existing modernist–functionalist pavilion, so that, in a somewhat risky move, their competition entry argued for the building’s renewal as a quasi-listed monument and succeeded.

In the first phase, the building was refurbished and adapted to contemporary needs and functions; after some years of use, the complex was expanded by modifying the functions and adding a new pavilion on the square. In the process of careful restoration and discreet transformation, we can trace an attitude that does not prioritise a distinctive architectural ‘trace’ or self-expression, but instead expresses its architectural values through sensitivity towards and respect for what already exists. It is an exemplary architectural stance in an age that favours novelty and emblematic singularity.

Current position

János Golda’s oeuvre is far from complete, and this textual sketch is likewise incomplete. It has not dealt with the private commissions of the early 2000s – the family houses built in Budapest and its environs for families with links to Miskolc – nor with the house designed by Golda and Ágnes Thoma for their own use near the Skanzen open-air museum in Szentendre.

This appreciation has likewise not addressed Golda’s work as chief architect or his involvement in municipal design review boards – his architectural presence in Edelény, Sopron, and Szentendre.

Theoretical work within his oeuvre also offers an interesting field for research: the numerous texts he has written for conferences, exhibitions, DLA defences, and diploma reviews are, beyond their concrete content, significant essays in architectural and cultural theory.

By way of a final word: in the case of creative figures, the central components of an oeuvre are typically the works themselves and their publications. There are, however, certain personalities whose creative energies extend further and also shape communities. Without doubt, János Golda belongs among these rare individuals.

[Written: 2016]

János Golda

Selection of works