Born a Century Ago: Kamill Kismarty-Lechner

Text: Zsolt Ruszthy

Az Alsó-erdősor utcai iskola, 1957-61

Kamill Kismarty-Lechner architect was born in Budapest 100 years ago, in 1914. He was a teaching assistant of the Department of Building Construction at the Budapest Technical University between 1942 and 1944. In 1948 he burst into international public awareness with his school in Szikszó especially because of its central area he referred to as the “buzz hall”. Almost every single journal in Hungary as well as German and French architectural journals published articles about it. The correlations and interplay of school buildings and education came to be his permanent subject of research. In 1949 he designed school desks with tubular frames which was a novelty then in Europe. He wrote several studies on school-construction projects and designed further school buildings in Budapest. In 1995 he was awarded the Ybl Prize. He died in 2003.