Students from Kansas and the Budapest Technical University in the Buda Castle

Text: Péter Magyar

During the past two years I taught the fifth Master of Architecture course at the Faculty of Architecture of Kansas State University and following the examples set by some of my fellow lecturers I also prolonged the compulsory six months spent abroad in the fourth year even though only with a one-week stay. First I travelled to Denmark with the students’ group (half of the participants of my seminar), whilst last year we chose Hungary as our destination. For the Danish trip I gave them the topic of the Royal Theatre (which had been built by then) as a task, whereas in Budapest they had to deal with the theme „Spiritual Retreat” in their designs. The actual task was to analyse what new potentials open up against and besides the rapid development of technology for developing the inner values and intellectual skills of human beings. Beyond that, or to facilitate this, we analysed what architectural tools could accompany and assist a development of this kind. During our trip to Budapest the Department of Drawing and Form at the BME Faculty of Architecture convinced 12 participants of a seminar of the eligibility of my designing programme offering free scope. As a result the Hungarian and American students had quite a few occasions to meet and exchange their conceptions and intentions whilst we stayed there.