Text: Anna Erhardt, Bence Pallos

The history of the Visegrád Camp, which has been running for 44 years, dates back to 1981. At that time, a few enthusiastic architecture students from the University of Technology approached Imre Makovecz and asked him to help them gain a deeper understanding of architecture beyond the limits of formal university education. The master’s answer was to build something together. Working in the Pilis Park Forest, he arranged for an abandoned mine yard in the park forest to be the home of the first architecture camp. Among the organizers were Attila Turi, Lőrinc Csernyus, Ferenc Salamin, and László Zsigmond – today’s leading architects – who formed a decades-long alliance thanks to the time they spent together. The camps organized in the mine yard lasted until 2001, after which they lived on as occasional “traveling camps” in various parts of the country, from Sárospatak to Devecser, until 2014, when they returned to Visegrád. The Visegrád Architecture Camps, which gained new momentum in 2014, also follow the community-building philosophy formulated by Imre Makovecz, and their main objective – now in close cooperation with the local government – is to create small-scale buildings suitable for public use within the town of Visegrád.