Photo Exhibition by Péter Gyukics, FUGA, 14.09- 01.10.

Text: István Schneller
Photos: Péter Gyukics

The primary task of architecture in general — as the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, among others, phrased it — is to create an experience of place and space, of „placelikeness” in a homogeneous world without place or meaning, in a world of sheer extension without end. Almost all architectural works are both utilitarian tools and objects of metaphysical contemplation in the best sense of the word, Pallasmaa continues. The essence of architecture, according to this conception, is the expression of human’s existential state. It took the form-cleansing and form-breaking era of modern art and architecture for church architecture to abandon the paths it had taken up until then. The dismantling of the traditional symbols, which had by then been emptied of their meanings, meant the removal of the layers that prevented the true encounter from being forgotten. In sacred architecture, this has led to a search for a new path, and often to a loss of confidence. Church architecture naturally made use of the patterns, the streamlined forms and the new materials of the new era, but it also very often became a model for itself. It is not widely known that modern architecture, for all its rationalism, functionalism and the secularised nature of its primary tasks, also used the religious imagination as a veritable diving board.

Many of its most important architects were those who used religious imagination to develop their architectural principles. The birth of modern art, especially that of fine arts, was strongly influenced by the new religious currents of the time, religious syncretism, the theosophy or anthroposophy in vogue at the time, Far Eastern cultures, religions and even so-called primitive cultures. Less well-known fact is the extent to which the architecture of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Liebeskind, or even Peter Eisenman was imbued with the spiritual imagination of their creators.