Modernity and the Search for Tradition in Károly Weichinger’s Realized Buildings and Later Writings

Text: Márk Váncza

Károly Weichinger (1893-1982), Kossuth Prize-winning architect, is a recognised figure of 20th-century Hungarian architecture. His design work, dating from the interwar era, is characterised by a balancing act between Modernism and Historicism. His work is accompanied by a relatively small number of completed buildings. The highlight of his design career, which unfolded in the mid-1930s, was his competition winning design for the Budapest Town Hall. In the changed political climate following the war, he retired from design work and turned to teaching. For two decades, as head of the Department of Public Building Design at the Budapest University of Technology, he became a major professional influence for generations. His traditional values and his belief in architecture based on historical continuity have been widely commemorated by his students.
The aim of my study is to present and systematise the most important principles of this creative attitude, which balances progress and tradition, through Weichinger’s work as a designer and publicist. Approached from the perspective of public accessibility as a social demand on modernity in its own time, the topic, which seems to be a matter of historical research, becomes relevant for our present. In our country today, the prestige of the architectural profession is gradually declining, and it is therefore important and timely to examine the work of those architects whose oeuvre ambitioned to bridge the gap between professional authenticity and the need for social acceptance.