Éva Lovra: Cities in The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Urban Fabric and City Typology 1867-1918

Text: Tamás Meggyesi

Maps are not only means of orientation, but also representations of our spatial awareness; this is one of the reasons why many architects have chosen this profession. This kind of magic fascinated Éva Lovra as well, who got her degree as a constructor architect, and despite her young age, she chose to launch as her oeuvre a fantastic enterprise: she examined 70 cities of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and made efforts to decipher the secret of both their variety and multi-colouredness and their striking similarities. The result as a peculiar „typology”, according to which we can distinguish 9 basic types of urban settlements within which we can identify certain repetitive fabric patterns of design and structure.