When György Jánossy embarked upon his career in 1948 as a newly graduated architect, he already carried with him substantial intellectual capital. Part of this was the classical education received within his family, as well as the free, modern and scientifically minded spirit of the Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium (Lutheran Grammar School on Fasor Boulevard, Budapest), whose teaching was of genuinely European standard. Equally formative was the puritan aesthetic and sober functionalism of Nordic Modernism, which he encountered during his stays in Denmark and Sweden between 1945 and 1947. He also found himself, from the outset, in an excellent professional environment: namely in the newly created large state design office, the MATI (Magyar Általános Tervező Iroda), later reorganised as KÖZTI (Középülettervező Iroda, Public Building Design Office), where he entered the studio of István Janáky [Hungarian architect, 1901–1966]. From 1949 onwards, Janáky chiefly worked on the reconstruction of the Buda Castle District and on the design of the University in Miskolc [a post-war technical university].
Jánossy’s first independent work – the six, saw-tooth-shifted dormitory buildings of the Miskolc University – already demonstrated a distinctive architectural mindset. And although Hungarian architecture, compelled into the confines of ‘szocreál’ [Socialist Realism imposed during early state-socialist cultural policy], allowed only limited freedom, the Scandinavian influence remained palpable in his designs and completed buildings for quite some time. Yet Jánossy – himself also a talented visual artist – responded with great sensitivity to new artistic means of expression, and soon discovered a path that proved pioneering. Alongside his refined sense of proportion, honed by classical formal training, he transformed the twentieth-century architectural values of honesty, raw surfaces and large masses into something approaching sculptural quality. Owing to this, when exposed concrete surfaces appeared for the first time in Hungary on the basis of his designs, they did not follow an international fashion but resulted in mature works of independent character.
The peculiar, classicist reinterpretation of ‘szocreál’ in Hungary offered Jánossy a workable point of departure. His 1951 cultural centre in Csepel and his 1953 office-building design in Miskolc display monumental façades, arcades and massive corner towers. He also produced formal variations for the prefabricated panel-house types of the panel-construction era then beginning. Yet very early – only a few years after launching his career – the first work was erected that stood in striking contrast to the typifying tendencies of the age and revealed Jánossy’s architectural vision in its full clarity. This was the Water Tower of the Gödöllő University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, arguably one of the most beautiful Hungarian buildings of the 1950s. Despite its industrial function, in its massing, proportions and detailing it appears almost as a sacred structure. It was the summative achievement of a young, European-minded architect sensitive to the pure forms of Modernism at a time when church building was not permitted in Hungary. Its classical formation is more timeless than modern, which is why it still feels as fresh today as at the time of its creation.
The tower rises on the highest point of a hill, positioned precisely along the watershed between the rivers Danube and Tisza. Structurally, it consists of two concentric cylinders, with the inner one containing the water. Between the two, starting from two separate entrances, two distinct stairways ascend, avoiding one another “like a devil’s staircase”. One leads to the water tank, the other to the top of the tower. On the cylindrical surface of the tower, built of painted, raw brick, minute, slit-like, framed windows are arranged with rigorous regularity; beneath the projecting cornice runs a line of larger, square windows. Above the cornice, a recessed, perforated parapet surrounds the steel-framed, glass-walled viewing terrace, originally intended to serve as both a meteorological station and an astronomical observation point. The lookout is topped by sheet metal, crowned with a large weather vane whose shadow moves about the tower garden as a sundial. A closed lower body and a light-filled upper volume, equilibrium and simplicity – these define the building. Owing to this harmony, it is capable of conveying symbolic meanings beyond its mere function. Jánossy’s architectural experiences from Scandinavia may be perceived most purely in this building.
The profession is almost unanimous in regarding the other summit of Jánossy’s oeuvre as the residential building constructed in 1962 on an infill site in the Buda Castle District. Here, for the first time after 1948 – and in a distinctly original manner – the principle of contextual integration was articulated as a key consideration in urban design. Standing on the Tóth Árpád Promenade, the building has an internal courtyard onto which open-access galleries face, leading to two-storey flats and studio apartments. Externally, the house presents a painted, raw-brick façade, a concrete plinth, square windows and French balconies whose lower band is fronted by a plexiglass balustrade. The composition hinges on the beauty of its untreated, irregular surfaces, the classical proportions of the openings, and the closed gable of the side elevation animated by vertical strips running up to the ridge of the pitched roof – all of which convey the historical atmosphere of the Castle District. In an interview, Jánossy reflected on the building as follows: “We conveyed our architectural message in the refined instrumentation of a string quartet. We used modern means and materials, but in truth we synthesised them, harmonising them with the old.” The house has remained a staple in architectural pedagogy, regarded as a rare instance of a harmonious architectural work within a complex historic environment that offers an individually conceived yet appropriately reasoned response to both formal and historical questions.
Much later, in 1979, another of Jánossy’s buildings, the Diplomat Residence was completed on a prominent site of the Castle District – again an infill plot – adjacent to the Matthias Church [a major medieval church], on the corner of Szentháromság Square. Here too he used painted brick for the façade, though the proportions and rhythm of the openings shift towards the corner: on the vertically articulated elevations, shaped by staggered brick piers, the narrow window apertures gradually assume an elongated, horizontal form as they approach the corner. The façade’s cadence thus changes tempo, slowing perceptibly. It is an intriguing formal interplay in which contour and rhythm forge a relationship with the surrounding medieval houses.
In 1965 Jánossy received his first Ybl Prize [prestigious state architectural award in Hungary] for the Karancs Hotel in Salgótarján, completed two years earlier. Since 1957 he had been involved in planning the centre of this mining settlement, which had rapidly swollen in population due to the socialist industrialisation programme [state-driven heavy industrial expansion under early socialism]. He designed a hospital, an ambulance station and a housing estate for the town, and contributed proposals to the overall masterplan. The Karancs Hotel was realised as the first major element of the new town centre. Its seven-storey, roof-terraced hotel block, raised above a low, horizontal plinth building, appears as a tower-like marker on the corner of the main square. It stands on five massive reinforced-concrete frames, lifted slightly above the horizontal volume. The two side elevations are animated by the play of reinforced-concrete elements of varying widths and differing floor-by-floor arrangements. The building is a milestone: here, for the first time in Hungary, raw reinforced concrete appeared as a façade material. Jánossy justified its use over plaster by referring to the town’s polluted air, yet the building’s construction roughly coincided with the emergence of the European architectural tendency known as Brutalism, characterised by solid, hefty forms and unrefined concrete surfaces. Jánossy softened the hardness of the material through the modulation of light and shadow, and made excellent use of its sculptural possibilities. On the side elevation he combined the concrete with coloured, glazed ceramic inserts; the horizontal plinth was relieved by large glass surfaces, by reinforced-concrete beams projecting over the entrance, and by an elegant staircase.
This sense of lightness had already manifested itself a few years earlier – still without any monumental character – in the compositions of the Sport csónakház (lit. Sport Boathouse, 1958) and the Lido Szálló és Csónakház (lit. Lido Hotel and Boathouse, 1960) on the Római-part [a riverside leisure area on the Danube in northern Budapest]. In the Sport Boathouse, the raw brick infill walls, painted red and set into a monolithic reinforced-concrete frame, together with the broadly projecting roof shell and the colourful façade insert, achieve an overall effect that is light and playful rather than weighty. By contrast, the Lido’s entrance canopy, lifted on slender concrete columns, the interconnected composition of its four buildings, and above all the ornament of its rear façade – an open staircase attached to the reinforced-concrete boiler chimney – already form an architectural sculpture in which varied masses cohere into an exciting unity.
The most significant event in Hungarian architecture of the 1960s was the competition for the new building of the Nemzeti Színház (National Theatre) on the Dózsa György Road site. Although Jánossy’s proposal was not among the prize-winning entries, it nevertheless deserves mention. His capacity for symbolic architectural form arguably reached its peak in this design. Jánossy conceived a sculptural, monumental form: the vast, asymmetrical suspended roof arching over stage and auditorium appears, at the same time, almost organic. In the design brief he wrote: “The powerful form arising from the great structural configuration may evoke many associations. Its rootedness in the ground, its resemblance to a mountain, its likeness to a root, and the draped quality of the bronze cladding are all intended to provoke thought, for they form a perfect unity with the vegetational backdrop of the City Park.” The aspiration to create an organic unity between the urban landscape and a cultural function was far ahead of the time in which it was articulated.
Jánossy’s oeuvre came to an early close; the Lágymányos complex of the Faculty of Science of Eötvös Loránd University – ELTE TTK – designed jointly with István Mányi [Hungarian architect, b. 1946] in 1980, was his final work. He had not yet reached sixty. He was entrusted with few truly worthy commissions, yet he was able to channel much of his creative energy into teaching. He was an architect of large stature who left a significant mark. One of his contemporaries and colleagues, Mihály Kubinszky, recalled him as follows:
“He could draw, and draw well. He thought in spatial terms, which served his buildings well. His imagination always fused purposefulness with a fashion-resistant, enduring appearance. The simple, straightforward solutions of his buildings represent a high artistic standard. His merits are not diminished by the fact that he did not alone possess these qualities, nor by the results he achieved. He stood at the forefront among the outstanding creators of a gifted generation – also through his human conduct.”
[2017]