In Hungarian architecture at the end of the twentieth century, it is not uncommon for the exemplary elevation of a given place – a region or a town – to be attributable to the oeuvre of a single architect or to a clearly defined creative circle. One might also say that a settlement or a smaller region is placed on the map of contemporary architecture through the consistent careers of one or more makers. Just as Ferenc Bán in and around Nyíregyháza, the young architects who gathered around Antal Plesz in Miskolc, and Tamás Czigány in Győr and Pannonhalma created a compelling, distinctive local architecture, so Vilmos Tóth’s name has become inseparable from contemporary architecture in the Délvidék (Southern Territories). It was thanks to his work that the phenomenon emerged in Vojvodina, which his former design partner, Zoltán Valkay, introduced into professional discourse as “the clandestine school of Great Plain architecture”.
Vilmos Tóth’s life has been closely bound to the Délvidék. He was born in the village of Magyarszentmihály (Mihajlovo), and, following his father’s frequent reassignments as a district lawyer, the family moved to Jankahíd (Jankov Most), Torda (Turda), later to Csóka (Čoka), and then to Palics (Palić). After his university years in Belgrade, Vilmos Tóth chose Magyarkanizsa (Kanjiža) as his home, where he has lived since 1978. These relocations brought not only an intimate knowledge of the structure and life of small and medium-sized villages and towns, but also, alongside Hungarian as his mother tongue, proficiency in Serbian and Romanian. Hungarian folk traditions – still vividly alive in the villages at that time – and, above all, vernacular architecture exerted a strong influence on him from early childhood; as a primary-school pupil, he often sketched the houses he saw in his immediate surroundings. As a teenager, he committed himself to architecture. After completing primary school in 1967, he became a student at the construction technical school in Subotica, where, through extensive drawing, he mastered solutions for building-structural details. In 1971, he graduated as a certified architectural technician: his ‘diploma project’ was the design of a family house, for which he even carved a model in softwood.
After the school-leaving examination and a successful entrance examination, he proceeded directly to the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Belgrade. There, he encountered charismatic lecturers such as Bogdan Bogdanović and Ivan Antić, leading figures in Yugoslav architecture in the post-Second World War period. During his university years, he frequently visited Szeged, where he obtained publications on architecture in Hungary; through these, he came to know the work of Imre Makovecz, József Kerényi, and József Finta.
In 1979, fresh from graduation, he began work in the design office of the Magyarkanizsai Építőipari Kombinát, a construction combine employing several thousand people. At first, he was given smaller commissions – his first realised work was a garage for an ambulance station – but within the company he soon moved towards a direction far closer to him than construction from prefabricated elements: he could design a school, a health centre, a cinema. He began his career in a relatively fortunate period, in that respect at least, when respect for Hungarian vernacular architecture in Yugoslavia in the 1980s was no longer an attitude to be entirely rejected.
From the middle of the decade, however, a rapid downturn followed in construction, as in the country at large. After President Tito’s death (1980), Yugoslavia disintegrated within a few years, and commissions also dwindled at an accelerating pace at the Magyarkanizsa combine. Like many of his contemporaries, Vilmos Tóth turned to private practice, initially focusing on family houses; then, in 1991, he founded the Domus Design Office, which he directed until 2012. In its first years, the enterprise began in an almost impossible situation because of the outbreak of war: many architects fled the country, and inflation reached such a level that a payment received one day was scarcely worth anything the next. Even so, the architect, his wife, and their two small children remained in Magyarkanizsa. They lived in constant fear and uncertainty, yet Tóth was not conscripted, and no tragedy befell the immediate family during the war.
At the beginning of the 2000s, an upturn began once more, and it was then that the works regarded as among the most significant milestones of Vilmos Tóth’s career were built. Many designs were completed years – even a decade – before they could be realised; yet despite the protracted design and construction periods, drawn out for various reasons – whether war, deferred decisions, or lack of funding – the buildings’ concepts withstood the passage of time. This is no accident, for Tóth’s architecture stands in a distinctive relationship to time. For him, architecture does not begin there and then, when the foundation stone is laid, but rests on continuity: it carries a place's character and past into the present. It is saturated with memory, rooted in the past yet living in the present. In the Hungarian-inhabited areas of the Délvidék, turning towards the past in his approach means, on the one hand, the region's centuries-old vernacular architecture and, on the other, the pre-First World War ‘golden age’ of eclectic small-town architecture – traditions he transposes into the present. A research-minded, analytical personality, Vilmos Tóth always seeks the values of the specific place; he is organically connected to the given milieu, building from its material, formal, spiritual, cultural and historical layers – while having no intention of denying the present. That is to say: he does not approach the history of a place with the gesture of returning to the past; rather, in the spirit of memory and continuity, he carries forward the values bequeathed to us, making them a living part of the present. At times, he selects visual elements from the immediate surroundings which he presents – or at least alludes to – in the form of quotation so often employed by postmodernism; at other times, he refines the characteristics of the wider region into symbols, proportions and plan composition, binding the building to its concrete site by placing inherited details within a new time.
This approach – strengthening a place’s historical identity in a mesh-like manner across several layers at once – already made Vilmos Tóth’s architecture a singular phenomenon at the outset of his career in the 1980s. The Magyarkanizsa primary school, built in 1985, used the period’s obligatory materials and systems, yet on its small-town scale and in its proportions, the subtle handling of the corner entrance, and the articulation of large surfaces, it bears the evident imprint of the town’s eclectic architectural heritage. Two years later, in 1987, the Kispiac school – four classrooms with an added sports hall – was completed, and here the intention to blend into its surroundings is already unmistakable. In the mid-1980s, he designed several residential and shop buildings for the town; these, too, reveal his distinctive signature: a strong faith in the dignity of urban public space, resulting in lively yet cheerful, harmonious places, with small tower-like gables, articulated façades, and an increased emphasis on the role of side elevations. The buildings’ character and inner life project themselves onto the façade while remaining closely connected to the town’s communal life. Nor did he shy away from experimentation: in 1986, on his initiative, Standardprojekt produced a large-panel ‘twin’ of an already built residential–commercial building.
The year 1991 brought fundamental changes to Vilmos Tóth’s professional life. He established his independent design office, and he also met Imre Makovecz and the Hungary-based architects of the Károly Kós Association in person. He joined the team leading the renovation of the buildings of the Népkör Művelődési Központ, Subotica (Népkör Cultural Centre), where he carried out the Serbian localisation of the designs by Makona Kft. There, he encountered the circle of architects working in an organic spirit. He recalls the experience as follows: “I can say it was as if I had, for the first time, become acquainted with genuine architectural design and the science of drafting. My life changed. I came home. At last, I found people with whom we understood one another [1].” From then on, he regularly attended the Association’s gatherings and became an active member of the organic architects’ professional and friendly community. In the following years, he designed the Vitamin office building in Horgos (Horgoš) (1992–1994), whose strongly projected, broken-line, high-gabled entrance mass and cruciform plan became defining features in several later works.
In 1992, the Orthodox church in Ilonafalu (Zimonići) was built, marking the first appearance in Vilmos Tóth’s work of the pairing of tower and dome, which would likewise become an important mass-forming device in subsequent projects. The dome, symbolising the feminine quality, and the tower, rising with masculine assertiveness, unite the two spheres to communicate far more than what follows from the traditions of Orthodox church architecture: they are elevated into a symbol of wholeness that embraces the two poles as equals.
In 1996, he began designing the Church of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in Senta, which was consecrated more than twenty years later, in 2017. The church commemorates two significant events: the Battle of Senta, fought against the Ottomans in 1697, and the 100th anniversary of the patron saint’s death. A Roman Catholic church had stood on Senta’s main square from 1770, but it burned to the ground in 1911. Its reconstruction was first slowed by the Great War and then by the subsequent change of sovereignty; after 1945, the new Yugoslav authorities did not permit work to continue, so in 1949 the walls, already built up to roof height, were demolished with tanks, and a park was laid out on the site. The idea of building a church resurfaced only in 1996, in connection with the approaching anniversaries of the Battle of Senta and the death of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, though by then on a different site. An invited design competition was announced, and Vilmos Tóth’s design won. The two anniversaries differ markedly: the memory of a victorious battle with heavy loss of life had to be brought together with that of a young nun’s brief earthly existence. Here, too, the duality of dome and tower – the feminine and the masculine – is articulated: the dome form was inspired by military tents, while the tower proclaims victory. The designer also incorporated the history of the main-square church into the new church: the surviving columns of the half-built Saint Stephen Church, demolished in 1949, were relocated to the entrance of the new house of God, and the pediment above the entrance likewise refers back to the earlier unfinished building, thus preserving the memory of the community’s church-building efforts. The triumphal-arch-like gate emphasises victory.
At the same time, the church’s plan resembles a bouquet of flowers – a gesture of homage to Saint Thérèse: seen from above, the approach path reads as the bouquet’s stem, while the three domed masses represent the blossoms. Along the outer walls, the earth fill is overgrown with greenery, creating the sense that the buds are breaking directly from the ground. The spatial division was dictated by the building’s operation: the 500-seat space, divided into three parts, can accommodate several events simultaneously and allows for more economical use. The puritan vocabulary of the interior, the imposing ribbed timber ceiling, and the light falling from the rooflights at the centres of the domes further intensify the nature-near atmosphere. In the small stained-glass windows opened in the side walls, the faces of Hungarian saints and blesseds appear in sequence. The stained glass and the altarpiece were crafted by Zsuzsanna Korhecz Papp, while the altar was designed by Zoltán Valkay. The church’s rich formal symbolism and restrained appearance convincingly convey the memory of the historical and ecclesiastical events it commemorates.
The Church of Saint Augustine in Nosza (Nosa) came into being over ten years ago: the first designs were made in 1997, construction began in 2001, and it opened its doors to worshippers in 2007. The single-towered structure, shaped like a boat listing to one side, carries strong Christian symbolism that also appears in the writings of Saint Augustine: a stranded ship is rescued by the tower’s “sail”, a signal that cries out towards the heavens. The tower piercing the roof, the repetition of the boat form as a pointed vault over the altar, the simple white-painted interior, the ribs of the glued-laminated timber beams, and the seed-shaped rooflight are all inspired by core ideas of Augustine’s teachings translated into architecture – a powerful message from a community that regards church-building as a guarantee of survival. Despite its small size (a footprint of only 140 m²), it provides space for 100 people on the ground floor and 100 in the gallery, with a small catechism room also accommodated above the sacred space.
The 2000s brought works that may be considered the high points of the oeuvre: richly symbolic projects built up in layers. The symbol-laden Documentation Centre in Senta (2002; today Vajdasági Magyar Művelődési Intézet [Vojvodina Hungarian Cultural Institute]) is organised under the sign of the number three. Its plan was inspired by the tripartite layout of Great Plain peasant houses, and in its composition, it unites three volumes symbolising the three parts of Vojvodina – Bačka, Banat, and Syrmia. The yellow and red façade bricks of the left-hand part refer to Byzantine architecture and Slavic presence, thus to Syrmia. The right-hand part symbolises Bačka, the Danube–Tisza interfluve and the important historical routes along the river valleys. The central domed section housing the library evokes the seemingly endless plain of Banat, where “the sky seems almost to press down upon the human being” [2]. In its multi-storey space, light timber structures running continuously upwards lend the interior a wonderful simplicity; their verticality also gently counterpoints the horizontal emphasis of the shelving system that follows the plan’s elliptical outline. At the same time, the whole building, through its forms, alludes to characteristic details of Senta Town Hall: the dome’s basket-arch broadly matches the curved lines visible on the Town Hall tower and ground-floor shopfronts, while the elliptical space beneath the dome echoes the Town Hall’s ceremonial stairwell. The interior design was prepared by Zoltán Valkay, who, in this period, was Vilmos Tóth’s regular design partner. The ceiling decoration is the work of the architect László Rostás and the folk woodcarver László Égerházi; the composition uniting cosmic symbols encompasses the Sun, the Moon and the Milky Way, whose rotation is almost perceptible across the lamellae that form the dome structure. The dome itself was nicknamed by the architect and builders the cloak of the Boldogasszony, spreading protectively over the community using the space.
In 2004, the Cultural Centre and Library were handed over, and their defining elements are once again the tower and the dome. Here, the duality also maps function: behind the tower, active work is carried out to preserve and popularise Hungarian traditions, while beneath the dome – as in the Senta building – the library is located, with its more contemplative, intimate milieu. On the tower, a detail from the opposite façade of the Rekeczi House also appears, connecting to the immediate context as an architectural echo. The tower has a particularly important role in the Great Plain landscape: it not only suggests strength, decisiveness, and protection, but also serves as a point of orientation on the plain, both geographically and spiritually. For Vilmos Tóth, the tower in the Délvidék is such a powerful identity-forming element that, as a symbol, it also embodies the idea of survival and steadfastness. Along the southern edge of Hungarian culture, Vilmos Tóth built a total of seven towers across five buildings. In his architectural thinking, they play a role akin to that articulated by Imre Makovecz on several occasions: they connect the lower and upper worlds, forming a passage from everyday space to the mythical realm. This idea is rendered with particular clarity in Tóth’s towers.
The series of works, matured over decades or realised in multiple phases, includes the Cultural and Educational Centre that closes the main square of Magyarkanizsa, now known as the House of Arts. The main building was completed in 1985, early in Vilmos Tóth’s career; in 1995, it was expanded with a stage; in 2006, the Regional Creative Workshop was built in the complex’s courtyard, providing a home for the experimental workshop of the world-renowned dancer and dance pedagogue József Nagy. In 2009, a further wing was added, connected to the theatre’s main entrance, containing offices, lecture rooms, a gallery, an artists’ café and a small 27-bed hotel. The final phase was completed in 2013, when the complex was extended with the Regional Centre for Continuing Teacher Education. The most intriguing element of the ensemble, the rehearsal hall of the Regional Creative Workshop, follows the plan of a single-nave church ending in an apse. With brick piers emphasising its corners, it is a castle-like, massive presence; its circular apse contains the set-making workshop, a kind of ‘church within the church’, highlighting the sacral character of art. At the same time, it is open and transparent, not least thanks to a lightly curving small bridge that seems to hover between the rehearsal hall and the theatre wing.
In 2007, the Village House in Oromhegyes (Trešnjevac) was completed to Vilmos Tóth’s designs, accommodating 200 people and featuring a stage, library, rehearsal rooms, kitchen, and ancillary spaces. Its octagonal central space evokes the principal and intermediate points of the compass, while also alluding to a motif found on the attic ventilators of Oromhegyes houses: a cross inscribed within an octagon. The form is also a mythical symbol – a transition between the square and the circle, that is, a bearer of the connection between Earth and Sky – designating the cultural centre as the focus of a kind of cultic centre. “Masses reminiscent of village houses intersect into the central part, which recalls a dry mill and, like an energy bell, settles over the great hall,” the architect writes [3]. Around the ceremonial hall runs a closed, glazed gallery, while the four gabled house-ends closing the main mass were inspired by Vojvodina vernacular architecture.
One further building must be mentioned: small in scale yet of particular importance in the oeuvre for its role in preserving local tradition. The visitor centre of the Great Bustard Reserve in Mokrin, completed in 2012, stands in the steppe-like landscape of the Mokrin–Hódegyháza (Jazovo)–Szaján (Sajan) triangle, near the reserve’s eastern entrance. Here, an earthen-walled farmstead once stood, likely with the sun-ray gable that appears on many houses in the area. Vilmos Tóth evokes this motif at the north end of the visitor centre. The low, single-storey building with its lookout tower is itself eloquent in form: its outline suggests a bustard – brooding, sunning itself. Its materials – timber, brick and reclaimed roof tiles – likewise carry local traditions into the architecture of the twenty-first century. Form and content thus coincide in a double sense: the bustard, acutely sensitive to changes in its environment, is declining in number, and so the building, in itself, also evokes the dangerous nature of destructive processes.
Any summary of the career must include the thread that binds Vilmos Tóth’s work to organic architecture. “There is no greater sin than to spoil the spirit of a place,” he maintains, and for him, ‘organic’ is synonymous with a place’s past and traditions – its vernacular architecture formed over centuries, and the small-town architecture that shapes culture and identity. He does not regard organic architecture as a style but as a way of explaining the world; however, he does so not by following the Steinerian philosophy represented by Imre Makovecz, but as an expression of a strong, regional Hungarian consciousness. Through their proportions, symbols, materiality and formal details, his buildings constitute a rich treasury of the Hungarian architectural traditions of the Délvidék. For Vilmos Tóth, it is beyond question that these traditions have a right to exist in the twenty-first century – indeed, that they have a powerful, sustaining, community-forming role. Since his retirement, he has not designed buildings, yet he remains actively involved in the communal life of his town: he passes on folk craft knowledge to the young people of Magyarkanizsa through a heritage association he and his wife, Ágnes Tóth, founded.
[2022]
[1] Vilmos Tóth: Tervezés a nemzeti építészeti hagyományok szellemében (lit. Designing in the Spirit of National Architectural Traditions), induction speech as an academician of the Hungarian Academy of Arts – Délvidék–Vajdaság, Pesti Vigadó, 31 August 2022.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.