The architecture of László Sáros constitutes an independently compelling chapter within Hungarian organic architecture. His entire oeuvre is shaped by three fundamental factors: his origins in an artistic family, as his father, brother, and father-in-law were all visual artists, and his wife, Márta Tenkács, is likewise an architect and also his design partner; his encounter with Imre Makovecz; and the duality of being a significant artist as both an architect and a photographer. His broad education, his familiarity with the related arts, and his distinctive photographic way of seeing have marked out a unique path for him within the spectrum of contemporary Hungarian architecture.
Even before his years at the University of Technology, he became acquainted with János Gerle, and during his studies he developed an interest in the work of Imre Makovecz. The three of them formed the core of the professional circle from which Hungarian organic architecture, shaped by Makovecz’s principles, began to emerge. What began as a friendship soon developed into a master–apprentice relationship, with Sáros and Gerle becoming Makovecz’s first private students. Later, a wider circle of young architects and architecture students formed around them, who from 1969 onwards attended the first private study sessions in Makovecz’s home. At that time, the focus of their studies was not yet the theoretical and practical issues of organic architecture grounded in the spirit of anthroposophy. Rather, they sought to broaden their education and intellectual orientation, attempting to break out of the narrow possibilities available in Hungary at the time. In 1966, a French architectural journal, l'Architecture d’aujourd’hui, published the so-called Cordier diagram, which presented the genealogy of architectural and philosophical processes in a schematic form. Based on that, participants in the study sessions prepared presentations on individual creators, movements, phenomena, or schools, and shared their knowledge with the others. Sáros, still an architecture student at the time, was formed within this ‘school’, where he learned to understand the true place of architecture within the context of society and culture. This foundational approach was continued in the gatherings of the so-called second Makovecz private school, held at the flat of Attila Komjáthy, and from 1981 onwards in the Visegrád camps.
Sáros’s professional career began in the late 1970s with the design of small-town department stores, hotels, and holiday resorts. His outstanding early works include the Hotel Tokaj in Tokaj, completed in 1979, at once robust and light with reinforced concrete masses, composed with a refined sense of proportion; the Skála Department Store, also designed for Tokaj in 1983, which unifies terrace-like levels through a dynamic vertical stair tower; and the fifteen-building complex of the Gyula Thermal Resort Cooperative, constructed between 1983 and 1990. In the final decade of socialism, time-shares offered a path to material advancement. Accordingly, the architectural formation of the resort, alongside the calm associated with rest and leisure, demanded a more expressive design approach, one that was not exactly prestigious, yet conveyed the atmosphere of a freer and more autonomous way of life. The generous, undulating cylindrical surfaces are interlocked, converging towards the closed end façade in the form of flower petals, while the reinforced concrete blade walls running between the resort units reach the ground in soft curves. The complex is characterised by stylised natural motifs and restraint, and already displays several features that would later become hallmarks of Sáros’s architecture: the finely stepped articulation of masses, geometric decorative elements favoured by Postmodernism yet further developed from the legacy of Art Deco, the triangle, divided glass windows, the framing of entrances, ornamentation accentuating corner edges, a well-proportioned system of skylights, and occasional vivid colouring.
The Sátorhegy Department Store in Sátoraljaújhely, completed in 1988, creates the atmosphere of a small, self-contained town with its recessed ground floor, the upper level supported by slender columns, the arcade-like space formed beneath it, and the jaunty triangular windows that break up the line of the pitched roof. The vertical stepping of the façade introduces an additional sense of dynamism into the airily light building, while the more massive upper storey, with its projecting wooden bracket supports, conveys a sense of support and strength.
In the late eighties, at the time of the regime change, Sáros received his first major professional recognition, the SZOT Award for the Flóra Hotel in Eger, completed in 1989. The hotel’s two wings embrace an inner courtyard in a V-shaped configuration, with the entrance block functioning as a hinge. The signal-like eyebrow arches appearing on the façade, the vivid colours set against the white surface, the glass strip running along the roof ridges for illumination, and the balcony with timber balustrade, which runs around the outer façade of the block like a corridor and is divided into more intimate units towards the inside, all engage in a play of historical references. Yet this is more than mere play: the building communicates the sense of protection and defensibility associated with a secure castle, while remaining highly open to its surroundings through the ground-floor terraces extending into the garden and the slender mansard windows of the uppermost level. Through his authentic and inventive handling of historical elements, Sáros opened a path within Hungarian architecture towards a freer interpretation of Postmodernism, one that places trust in forms.
A residential house in Szentendre completed in 1990, followed by the conversion of a listed farmhouse in Belgium in 1991, marked a further turning point in Sáros’s architecture. These works represent important milestones in his approach to fitting into a small-town scale and achieving expression through minimal gestures. In the case of the Szentendre house, the single-storey, pitched-roof context and terrace housing offered only one possibility for expanding the interior space: by accentuating the corner, Sáros recessed the entrance and created an upper level extending to the line of the street, supported by a single, massive column. In this way, the building presents a distinctive character alongside its neighbours, while in its material use, formal language, and even colouring it aligns sensitively with them. The conversion of the farmhouse in Heusden, through a modest roof raise and the retention of the existing masses and façades, alleviates the introverted nature of the agricultural building by means of divided glass surfaces extending down to garden level and a small, triangular projecting conservatory. This intervention connects exterior and interior space, while preserving the emphasis on the solidity of the unplastered brick walls.
From the early 1990s onwards, Sáros designed several commercial buildings and residential houses in Vác. The reconstruction of the market in the city centre in 1993, with its copper corner dome, open market square enclosed by arcaded wings, and formal play evoking medieval urban architecture, likewise operates through the dual force of openness and enclosure. Its arcaded configuration continues the atmosphere of the city’s Baroque main square, albeit in a more massive form, and through the generous application of elements already well known from the architect’s own formal repertoire. These include the skylight, the oculus dome with its visually striking internal timber structure, the obelisk-like finial at its apex, divided window surfaces, the balancing rhythm of arches and triangles, the stepped contours of the gateways, the use of colour, and the striking recessed façade element that lets the tree standing before it live almost organically incorporated into the building. The wide, cylindrical mass crowned by a dome reappears a few years later in a residential house built in Telki, where it provides a feminine pole to the house’s more austere volume articulated with harder edges. For this house, the designer was awarded the Pro Architectura Prize in 2000.
Sáros’s residential buildings offer ample scope for the varied articulation of formal balance, while he approaches his clients with the same level of professional humility and attentiveness as he shows in the case of commercial or other public buildings. For him, a building is the rational expression of everyday use, in which the correspondence of movement, sightlines, spatial proportions, and the relationship to the surrounding context constitutes a primary requirement. At the same time, this is the field in which he is able to most precisely connect contemporary material use with an organic approach, since the programme is developed jointly with his clients. Unlike other Hungarian practitioners of organic architecture, Sáros does not seek to further develop the formal vocabulary of Imre Makovecz, nor does he subscribe to the cult of wood as a living material. For him, organic architecture signifies a well-considered, life-oriented practice that supports and facilitates natural processes, employing spaces, forms, and materials capable of accommodating the organic manifestations of life. He enriches this approach with his own distinctive visual language, drawing on an element set derived from Postmodernism yet never imitative, through which he introduces historical depth and philosophical content into his buildings. The residential building in Barackfa Street in Budapest, completed in 1996, brought an element of surprise to a prosperous villa district characterised by a chaotic overall image inspired by a wide variety of styles. The placement of the complex, consisting of two family houses, on the sloping site is masterful, presenting a distinctive face in both directions of the incline. The volume rising between them, clad in rubble stone and evoking the atmosphere of medieval residential towers, accommodates the shared stairwell. The triangular form of the windows is echoed in the rubble-stone fence posts, while the skylight set into the truncated top of the tower and the face-like main façade suggest a friendly and welcoming environment. The barrel-vaulted metal sheet roofing is a new element that nevertheless integrates surprisingly well into the green surroundings and the world of raw stone walls. It does not create the false illusion that urban dwellers relocating to nature leave behind the advantages offered by technology, but rather tames and brings them into harmony with the landscape. The family house in Budaörs, completed in 1998, likewise reconciles this duality through the combined effect of the metal-clad barrel vault running across the entire mass of the building and the widely projecting timber supports of the upper floor. The four-unit holiday house built in Szántód in 2001 is an airy and pleasant building with a nine-bay ground plan, a centrally placed covered atrium in the form of a Greek cross, reclaimed brick cladding and clearly separated two-storey homes. The barrel-vaulted roof appears here as well, though only above two of the units, while the other two are covered by pitched roofs. From the ground-floor living rooms, small private terraces open outwards, while the upper-floor bedrooms are each complemented by a balcony positioned above the terrace below. In the Udvardi House in Jászberény, dated 2003, the corner volume clad in brick and crowned by a square metal dome once again features the emphatic column already familiar from the Szentendre house, with the recessed entrance space set behind it. Above, on the upper level, a negative form appears in the shape of the slender obelisk motif frequently employed by Sáros, echoed by the triangular windows articulating the ground floor of the side wings. The roof covering composed of two materials, traditional tiles and bronze, the duality of the façades with exposed brick and rendered wall surfaces, the timber lattice balustrades of the upper-level French balconies, and the divided timber-framed windows simultaneously evoke local building traditions of the town and a range of twentieth-century stylistic variations, from Art Deco to Postmodernism.
From the late 1980s onwards, alongside his design practice, Sáros also assumed the role of chief architect in several settlements. This enriched his architecture with new perspectives, as cultural continuity, broader spatial, economic and historical interrelations, and social issues also began to appear in his work. The need to expand the ceremonial hall of the cemetery in Jászberény in 1999 did not allow for the originally intended retention of the earlier structure, and thus a new ceremonial hall was realised, supplemented by a funeral bell tower and two rows of columbaria integrated into its external wall. Its plastically articulated timber gate and the timber lattice of the rear façade, the board cladding of the bell tower, and the projecting eaves above the rows of urn niches enrich the place of mourning through the archetype of the residential home, linking life and death at the level of forms, materials and details. The transformation of the main square of Vác between 2003 and 2005 provoked one of the most stimulating debates in Hungarian monument protection over the past two decades. One of the most beautiful squares in the country was restored to its beauty by banning motor traffic and it has become a pleasant space for urban events, meetings and walks. The previously existing fountain and Baroque sculptures were retained, and Sáros complemented them with elements that reflect the Baroque style in a contemporary reinterpretation. A stone-clad gateway, an enclosed café terrace, an elegant music pavilion, and candelabra of pleasing proportions and lines were added. At the centre of the square, beneath walkable glass, the stone silhouette of the church’s earliest form can be seen within an archaeological area. Along the Danube-facing side, a series of spectacular water features runs in a stylized, geometric wave pattern. The thoughtfully composed historical approach of the entire composition boldly combines preserved and potential elements, concentrating within the main square the finest layers of the town’s cultural and historical heritage.
Jászberény, Sáros’s hometown, suffered a major loss with the near-total demolition in 1968 of its dignified, twin-towered synagogue built in 1890. In its place, in 1970, a completely stripped-down, characterless, flat-roofed cubic building was erected, retaining the dimensions of the original mass and later functioning as the Municipal Library. The extension and transformation carried out in 2005 was also intended to commemorate the former synagogue. The main entrance of the now-four-storey volume was placed beneath a curved pitched roof. At the top of the dome clad in scaled brass, a skylight in the form of a three-dimensional Star of David was installed, its pattern cast onto the marble floor of the entrance hall, subtly signalling the building’s original sacred function. Inside, the dome represents the northern celestial sphere, with the stars indicated by fibre-optic lighting. The ridge of the red copper-clad roof runs the full length of the building, its curve punctuated by French-balcony skylight windows. Of the synagogue’s two reconstructed stair towers, one terminates in a pyramid, while the other accommodates an observatory. In front of the main entrance, a brass wind lobby was built according to Sáros’s design, its honeycomb form recalling the formal vocabulary of Hungarian Art Nouveau, while simultaneously accentuating and lending emphasis to the act of entering into the cultural public building. Against the white-rendered façade, the gleaming brass wind lobby has a jewel-like effect, while the timber entrance door and window frames harmonise sensitively with the metal inlays, and the triangular motifs derived from Art Deco stand in delicate contrast to the curved roof profile.
For Sáros, architecture and photography are closely interconnected activities, and alongside his buildings it is therefore essential to address his photographic series and published albums. “To see and to make seen” constitutes one of the central programmes of his life’s work. In his photographs, he reveals the essential relationships between the natural and the built landscape, exploring symmetries, directions, and spatial connections. Zsebbelgium (lit. PocketBelgium), assembled from photographs taken over many years at a farmhouse in Belgium, and CanyoNewyork, which contemplates American canyons and New York from a philosophical perspective, create an exceptionally distinctive genre of architectural photography. Tanú ez a kőhalom (lit. This Pile of Stones is a Witness), produced in collaboration with Dezső Váli, offers a subjective processing and preservation of the world of Central European Jewish cemeteries. Another important aspect of Sáros’s photographic oeuvre is that he was the first to comprehensively photograph the early buildings of Imre Makovecz, following the unfolding of Makovecz’s life work as a close friend and documenting it through images. This rich body of work represents exceptional value from both architectural and photographic-historical perspectives.
Pursuing an independent path as both an architect and a photographer, László Sáros has for decades been one of the driving forces of the Hungarian organic architecture movement and a conscious custodian of the intellectual legacy of Imre Makovecz, its founding figure. His long-standing and continuous roles, undertaken together with his wife, in the Vándoriskola (Wandering School), the Kós Károly Egyesülés (Károly Kós Association), the journal Országépítő (lit. Builder of Country), and the Kós Károly Foundation, as well as his responsibilities assumed between 2012 and 2016 as President of the Association of Hungarian Architects, have made him one of the outstanding figures of contemporary Hungarian architectural culture.
[2016]