Calvinist Church, Helvécia

Architect: Sándor Czégány
Text: Ferenc Salamin
Photos: Sándor Czégány

The Calvinist church in Helvécia has been born as a building sounding the praises of God as the fruit of the inner spiritual motif driving and moving the faithful, leaders of the community, their pastor, sponsors and builders. Each participant is simultaneously a creator contributing to it either via donation, organisation and enthusiasm, by drawing the plans, or doing manual labour. Everyone concerned in this story is an architect. The church is beautiful, fitting its niche with the appropriate volume, featuring a well-proportioned spire visible from afar. Enriched with details that inspire one to contemplate whilst also doing credit to human work, the interior is both a receptive one inviting inside and turning up towards the skies. The building would not join a fashionable trend, and yet is highly educational. It is a timeless house, losing the significance of the date of its construction within a few decades: it simply builds in and evokes the archetypal church housed in the collective unconscious of mankind.

Architect: Sándor Czégány
Structure: Tamás Mantuano – Pond Mérnöki Iroda
Electrical engineering: Zsuzsanna Kovács Lászlóné Homonnay – Inter Ház Tech Mérnökiroda
Soil mechanics: István Sipos Szabó –Statikus Mérnöki Iroda
Project manager: Imre Kiss
Masonry: József Katona – Tiszakürt
Timber works: Szabó-Szaki Kft.
Doors and windows: Krizsanyik és Társa Kft.
Carpenter works: Gyula Szelei Jr.
Benches: László Takács