Péter Szarvas, a Transcarpathian architect, was born on 25 January 1962 in Uzhhorod (Ungvár). For more than three decades, despite every hindrance, he has defended and shaped his native city with undiminished enthusiasm. His life is bound up with Uzhhorod; to this day, he lives on Calvary Hill in the house built by his priest–teacher grandfather.
His family’s artistic disposition strongly influenced his career choice. Although there were no architects among his relatives, several of his forebears were closely connected to the arts: musicians, visual artists, and even a playwright. His father trained as an accountant but never worked in that field. Instead, he developed tourism in Transcarpathia and organised the mountain-rescue service. On his mother’s side, he comes from a Greek Catholic priestly family; as a result, his mother, though she had completed teacher training, could not obtain a local teaching post and, for many years, sang with the Transcarpathian State Folk Ensemble. His grandmother, alongside physics and mathematics, taught drawing and needlework at the Greek Catholic civic girls’ school, where she became the last headmistress before its final closure in 1945. When his brother, six years his senior, went to study architecture at the Lviv Polytechnic, there was no question that he would follow the same path.
His university years proved decisive. The Faculty of Architecture is housed in the central block of the technical university, a beautiful nineteenth-century neoclassical building; he still recalls that entering those walls every day was a formative experience. Architectural history was taught to an exceptionally high standard, and he also benefited greatly from optional courses in architectural theory. He was, it is true, somewhat disappointed by the compulsory subjects beyond the discipline itself – chiefly political in nature – yet Lviv’s compelling and inspiring atmosphere compensated for much of this. After graduating, he returned to his native city and entered a long period of official employment. For ten years, he broadened his experience in the regional chief architect’s office, then worked for five years as deputy chief architect of Uzhhorod. Even at the outset of his career, however, he decided that, if necessary, he would not give up designing in the evenings or at night alongside administrative work. Whatever he turned to later broadened his outlook, yet he took care to keep designing his principal occupation. He sought out like-minded architects within the design institutes; many of them, in time, left the profession altogether, since making a living from architecture had by then become almost impossible. Moreover, offices dependent on state commissions gradually disappeared from the early 1990s onwards.
Together with colleagues in the chief architect’s office, Péter Szarvas formed a design working group that, among other tasks, assumed responsibility for heritage protection. The impetus came from a 1991 course organised by the National Inspectorate for Historic Monuments (Országos Műemléki Felügyelőség) for heritage professionals across the Carpathian Basin. From 1994, he served on Uzhhorod’s municipal design council; between 1994 and 1999, he was deputy chief architect of the Uzhhorod City Council; and, for a brief period – only three months in 2014 – he was elected chief architect of Uzhhorod. Among the achievements of that highly obstructed period, shaped by competing interest groups, one should single out the adoption of Uzhhorod’s local heritage-protection regulations.
The key role he assumed as a defender of the city dates from his time in the chief architect’s office. Szarvas’s work cannot be understood without knowledge of his native city. In the Soviet era, Uzhhorod was regarded as a historic city of comparable significance to Tallinn. Its setting is magnificent; the Second World War caused almost no damage to its historic fabric, and its varied architectural image is the outcome of organic development. Industrialisation and mass housing did not bypass it, yet these took place on the left bank of the river, away from the old town. Until Trianon, Uzhhorod’s development followed the typical trajectory of a county seat. Its distinctiveness lay in the fact that, thanks to Maria Theresa, it became the centre of the Greek Catholic Church within the Kingdom of Hungary. Whereas the region had previously belonged to Hungary, the Treaty of Trianon abruptly made Transcarpathia part of Czechoslovakia, a contrived geopolitical entity known as Podkarpatská Rus. This federative unit required a capital, and Uzhhorod was designated to serve that role. The infrastructure of a new administration had to be created: a parliament, ministries, and other administrative bodies. On the edge of the historic centre, across an area of nearly one hundred hectares, a modern district was built within a few years, comprising some thirty-five public and residential buildings, with the involvement of leading representatives of the highest architectural currents. In the city’s history, this period may be regarded as a clear peak of development. Yet construction of the theatre and grammar school could not begin: under the First Vienna Award, the city – into whose very body the new border cut – was, with a single stroke, re-annexed to Hungary. There was, then, a ready-made capital without an administrative territory. The end of the Second World War brought change once more: the Czechs did not return, but the great Russian bear appeared in their place. Soviet annexation brought new incomers who, for half a century, used these buildings – generally with little concern for maintenance and often by mutilating the interiors – yet the structures, built to such outstanding quality, survived further storms of history. Although Soviet neglect caused serious damage to the existing building stock, the historic district was, overall, spared, since its main construction activity was concentrated on largely undeveloped land. In terms of Uzhhorod’s heritage, the roots of the problem reach back roughly a century to Trianon. The truly grave trouble arrived with the Soviet Union’s dissolution. In 1944, the Russian soldiers’ boots crossed the city boundary; nearly half a century later, when it withdrew, it left behind enormous chaos – entirely new economic conditions and new users. Privatisation began, yet the misconceived ‘private ownership’ did more harm to the city than the Soviet era. The process first affected residential buildings, which therefore deteriorated fastest; then, slowly, destruction extended to almost every building type. The new owners believed anything was permissible. Within days, they smashed the beautiful interior spaces of the municipal cinema designed by Lajos Oelschläger-Őry, mutilated the Bercsényi Hotel, and demolished the city’s emblematic listed building, the Korona Hotel, leaving only the principal façade standing. The list could be continued almost indefinitely – not to mention the smaller amputations that befell nearly every architectural monument in Uzhhorod.
Péter Szarvas and his colleagues sought to anticipate these disasters before the destructive machinery reached full speed. In response to the new processes, they considered it essential to survey the city’s values. For this task, he organised a group within the chief architect’s office and persuaded the city hall to suspend privatisation in the inner-city area for the programme’s eighteen months. The enthusiastic team diligently gathered material: they photographed every building, drafted the urban heritage-protection programme, and compiled a list of assets to be protected. Under their system, transfer into private hands was tied to conditions guaranteeing the protection of those values. Hardly had the programme begun, however, when it was halted at the regional level: it was deemed unlawful to demand any guarantees from prospective owners. Thus, the urban protection programme ended overnight. What remained was an enormous archive of photographs, which then lay in a drawer for a further twenty-five years. Over that quarter century, architectural anarchy prevailed in Uzhhorod. At first, the legal background was lacking, since time was needed to develop it. Later, as in most post-Soviet successor states, there was neither the will nor the courage to enforce the laws.
Yet after this long hiatus, the results of the work were not lost: in 2018, with financial support from the Hungarian state, a high-quality trilingual volume titled Ungvár épített öröksége (lit. Uzhhorod’s Built Heritage) was published. The community received this gap-filling publication with nostalgia, for it recalls – to readers dulled by general fatigue – how clean and orderly Uzhhorod once was, when people still went out on Sundays for an evening promenade. At the same time, it functions as an indictment: anyone who takes it in hand can compare the images with present conditions and immediately grasp the shocking scale of destruction that unfolded over twenty-five years, from the early 1990s, in Uzhhorod’s values and built heritage.
Péter Szarvas believes that, against the avalanche that destroys all value, one must create ‘islands’ – by bringing together committed people who share similar convictions. “Islands that preserve memories important to the community. If a person’s past is taken away – if they are stripped of their memories – their personality is lost. A city carries its memory above all in its building stock. If that is destroyed, its identity ceases; it becomes uninteresting, banal. A cheap mass product. That is why what can still be protected must be protected, even the smallest detail,” he maintains. In his Don Quixote-like struggle for the city, he has found allies. The Pro Urbe civic heritage organisation, founded in 2009, brings together creative, value-creating individuals willing to take responsibility for Uzhhorod’s cultural heritage and to seek solutions together. Its membership – continually changing and mixed in age and ethnicity – includes doctors, lawyers, conductors, a blacksmith-artist, sculptors, journalists, historians, and even a biologist. They organise events that combine professional heritage presentations with artistic performances, typically musical. Thanks also to their steadfast activity, a strong young generation has emerged, with members conducting research in heritage protection at a very high level. It is encouraging that heritage protection has entered public discourse, community forums, and the media. The organisation raises the issue, and as a result, builders abandon their original plans, which constitutes a genuine success. This process was promising, yet the Russia–Ukraine war that broke out in 2022 created an entirely new situation in Uzhhorod. Sudden internal migration significantly swelled the city’s population, adding a layer raised in an alien cultural milieu, and the consequences are already almost tangible. The intensity of mass housing construction multiplied overnight, occupying every remaining undeveloped plot. Deprived in this way of room to grow, the city’s future prospects have become highly uncertain. The likely consequences of an encroaching ‘eastern mentality’ and the consumption of existing reserves can already be anticipated – and they are scarcely cheerful. The situation is compounded by investors’ profit-seeking, which no longer spares the historic city centre either. Although valid local heritage-protection regulations could restrain this, neither the city leadership nor state bodies are interested in doing so. In this changing world, precisely because of the wartime context, the formerly active defenders of the city currently have little scope for open resistance.
Only a small part of Péter Szarvas’s work concerns urban protection, as he has been a practising architect from the outset. With a few colleagues, he founded his own company in 1994 under the name Átrium; over two decades, they received more than 500 design commissions. One particularly dear project, and one that stands out in his career trajectory, is the Greek Catholic church in Ceholnya Street. Coming from a Greek Catholic priestly family, he knew that the church where his grandfather had served was confiscated by the state in the late 1940s, converted into a university computing centre, and eventually handed over to the Orthodox Church. The new church of the once-banned Greek Catholic community was built next door to the former building, on the lower part of the church garden, which had been divided by the political bargaining of the regime change. His guiding principles were integration with the historic setting and the creation of unity between exterior and interior spaces. The spatial organisation follows an unconventional radial–central structure, centred on the site’s only existing structure: a nineteenth-century chapel. This approach ensured that the church, together with the church garden, became a unified liturgical space capable of hosting large ecclesiastical events, including pilgrimage Masses. For nearly two decades after the legalisation of the Greek Catholic Church, the congregation – without a church building – celebrated the Sunday liturgy in the open air before the chapel, in the lime-tree-lined garden. Beyond his personal and familial ties, the architect sought to preserve this atmosphere through a boundary wall opening towards the city and through the light streaming through windows beneath the domed vault throughout the day. The design gesture running through the building commemorates the period when the church, in physical reality, did not yet exist – only in the hearts of the parish community.
An exceptionally interesting commission was the residential and office building – including a bank – on County Hall Square (Megyeház tér), which, despite its construction coinciding with the global financial crisis, became a genuine success story. Its seemingly substantial mass is justified by its central position within the urban fabric, where the axes of four streets converge on it. Its space-forming role is most evident in the previously missing southern ‘wall’ of a square characterised by significant changes in level, which lies at its lowest point.
In the 2000s, he also designed in Hungary. It was then that the Ikon winery in Balatonlelle was built on the site of an exhausted clay pit. Making the most of the topography, the terraced building rises in steps and blends into the natural environment, framed by the vineyard plantations on the hillside. The architectural concept, organically fitted to favourable natural conditions from a technological point of view, also sought to heal a landscape wound caused by human activity. From the panoramic tasting room on the building’s uppermost level, a splendid view opens over Little Balaton.
A stimulating professional challenge for Szarvas was the expansion of the DIK bakery’s plant on Kereknyei Street in Uzhhorod, which also includes a bakery shop. A high-voltage line cuts diagonally across the plot, and, because of the required safety distances, this determined the building’s unusual plan and form, tapering to a sharp angle. Its durable architectural character can also accommodate a possible future change of function with flexibility.
Among the recent projects completed is the building complex of the Ortutay Elemér Greek Catholic College of Advanced Studies and Community Centre. The institution’s aim in Berehove (Beregszász), Transcarpathia’s town with the highest proportion of Hungarian residents, is to organise programmes rooted in Greek Catholic heritage that are useful and important for both the Church and local society, and to operate the institution’s facilities. The centre’s namesake is Elemér Ortutay, PhD (1916–1997), a Greek Catholic priest whose life and witness made him a significant exemplary figure in the region. The western tower of the main building plays a dominant role in the townscape. Alongside the characteristic silhouettes of the existing Roman Catholic and Reformed churches, the Greek Catholic community’s new home has now also become part of Berehove’s visual identity, symbolising the importance of the historic churches in the town’s historical development.
Among his works still under construction, it is worth highlighting the conference hall at the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association headquarters in Uzhhorod, as well as the care home for the elderly and the nursery school in Berehove.
In recent years, Péter Szarvas has suspended operations at his own office and joined younger professionals who work not as architects but as specialist designers, with an appropriate marketing strategy and a network of connections; since 2014, he has been the lead designer at the Ankon Project Group engineering office.
He describes his design method as follows: “For me, the process is what matters. When I receive a commission, I always allow time for it to mature – I don’t sit down at the desk immediately. Until enough time has passed and the first line appears on the paper, even for me, it remains unclear what will take shape: one line brings forth the next, and then suddenly it assembles into a system. It is an inspired moment in which I believe I do not act alone. Humility is indispensable – of that I am certain. And if the solution is born – and always, like in a crossword, only one good solution is possible – it gives me enough joy and energy to carry it through, even against a client’s will. For that, I draw strength from my faith in the Creator and from my conviction in the rightness of the solution inspired by Him.”
Alongside design and heritage protection, he also devotes attention and energy to the care of monuments. As a colleague of the Teleki László Foundation, he is involved in surveying the condition of and restoring churches in Hungarian-inhabited settlements across Transcarpathia. With his colleagues, he has so far examined more than 60 churches from a list of around 190 buildings he compiled (many of medieval origin), which are used primarily by Hungarian-speaking Reformed, Roman Catholic, and Greek Catholic congregations. During these surveys, they sometimes encounter treasures of inestimable value. A striking example is the Reformed church in Visk (Vyshkovo), where, thanks to the foundation’s specialists, perhaps the century’s most significant art-historical discovery occurred: a continuous medieval fresco composition of 70 square metres emerged from beneath the upper layers of plaster.
Péter Szarvas has taken part, among other projects, in the restoration of the Gerény (Horyany) Rotunda and the Reformed churches of Bátfa (Batfa) and Nagybégány (Velika Bijhany). His name is also associated with the ongoing restoration of the ruined church in Kismuzsaly (Muzhiyeve) and with the design of the renovation and adaptive reuse of the Bethlen–Rákóczi castle in Berehove. He is currently involved in the crucial Carpathian Basin Monuments Register, run by the Teleki László Foundation, where he undertakes research into and the systematisation of Transcarpathia’s monument stock.
Szarvas regards value-saving – and the alignment of restorations with the needs of local communities – as his task, indeed his vocation. He believes and professes that through his work, he can contribute to the survival of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community, even in the most difficult times. In recognition of his achievements, he received the András Bacsinszky Order of Merit in 2021, the Hungarian Academy of Arts’ Prize for Architecture in 2022, and the György Granasztói Prize in 2024. The Hungarian Academy of Arts elected him a corresponding member in 2023 and a full member in 2025.
[2025]