Villa Walter Rozsi designed by József Fischer (one of the main figures of modern architecture in Hungary) teaming up with his wife, the engineer Eszter Pécsi, was commissioned by the famous opera singer Rozsi Walter and her husband, the textile merchant Geza Rado.

After the Second World War, the artist fled and the house was nationalized in 1949. The house was part of the facilities of the Korvin Ottó Hospital located in the complex of buildings of the adjacent sanatorium, and the villa was used for decades as a nursery and doctor's office. pediatrician. The hospital left the area in 2009, leaving a dilapidated building to its fate. Currently, the building is heritage protected under the Hungarian Museum of Architecture.

The house, one of the most outstanding pieces of interwar Hungarian modern architecture, has just been restored by the architect László Kokas, (inaugurated last Thursday, March 30, 2022) and the result will be presented in an exhibition that will show the meticulous process of restoration. The building will host exhibitions and events of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and the Monument Protection Documentation Center.
The inaugural exhibition entitled "Color Space and Living Space - the Villa" puts the spotlight on home and dwelling in interwar architecture, drawing on the rich material of MÉM-MDK (about 1.3 million documents, plans, photos, and furniture). In the former children's room, the visitor can get acquainted with the progressive principles of the time related to education, the study room reflects on the theme of work, and the keyword is comfort.
 
The project is inaugurated as the first piece of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Center (MÉM-MDK) to be installed in the buildings occupied by the former Hospital. The exhibition will open to visitors on May 18.

József Fischer was born on April 12, 1901 in Budapest. In 1922 he married the engineer Eszter Pécsi, with whom he would found his own architecture studio in the 1930s, and who would be the author of the structural calculations for Fischer's works.

Fischer was 35 years old when the villa was built in 1936, and by then he had already been working as an architect for several years in collaboration with Eszter Pécsi. Fischer and Pécsi were members of the Hungarian section of CIAM, the International Congresses of Modern Architecture, where the objective was the creation of social housing, according to the principles of the Charter of Athens, dealing with issues such as minimum housing and the massive construction of residences.

However, the reality at the beginning of the 1930s was that modern architects mainly designed villas(1), family houses, and weekend houses, responding to commissions from the intellectual elite. Fischer's residential houses were outstanding examples of modern Hungarian architecture, such as the house designed as experimental housing in Napraforgó Street (1931) and the Villa Hoffmann in Szépvölgyi Street (1933-1934).

Shortly before the start of the construction of Rózsi Walter Villa, Fischer would publish an article entitled, "Designer and Client", in January 1936, in which he openly expressed his opinion on the relationship between the client and the architect, and who had the last word on the project. (2)
 
"Fischer wrote that doctors also 'treat cases in their own way, not according to the demands of patients.' According to Fischer, the architect projects with foresight, taking into account the client's goals, as well as considerations that the client might not think of for himself."


Walter Villa, Access Facade by József Fischer and Eszter Pécsi. Source, Magazine.- Tér és Forma, 1937, no. 01, pp18-21.
 
Keeping in mind an image of clients with non-modern tastes, Fischer projects the floor plan of the house showing aspects of transition between a compartmentalized and hierarchical vision and a more modern open one. The spatial organization of the house dialogues between the principles of representativeness and functionality. Thus, on the ground floor, the program is destined for a shared space for the service rooms. However, on the first floor, with much higher ceilings, Fischer developed a flexible and fluid space dedicated to the dining room, the living room, or the room for receiving guests and giving concerts.

Shortly after, and already embarked on the realization of the house, József Fischer would proudly comment to his friend Marcel Breuer that he was building it in a letter, on April 26, 1936.

Although the main Hungarian architecture magazine, "Tér és Forma / Space and Shape", did not publish an article about the villa until January 1937, thanks to an interview with Rózsi Walter months before in a local newspaper,(3) it is confirmed that the villa on Bajza Street was completed in September 1936, and its owner had already started furnishing it in late August or early September.

The villa was initially furnished with neo-baroque furniture, common at the time, creating a contrast to the clean, modern design of the house. This did not mean that the owners were not delighted with the result, as stated by József Fischer in his memoirs.(4) Confirmation of this assessment is that the clients subsequently commissioned Fischer to extend their holiday home in Buda, and later they bought the well-known house of Lajos Kozma on the island of Lupa.

NOTES.-
1. Karel Teige would criticize Le Corbusier and Gropius for carrying out mostly housing for the elites and relegating social housing. Mentioned in: José Juan Barba. «MINIMUM HOUSING» CIRCUS, Madrid: Jaia Lore Artean, b. 138. Madrid, 2006. [Karel Teige. "The minimum dwelling". Ed. MIT, Massachusetts, 2002. Trans. Eric Dyuhosch."]
2. Tér és Forma, 1936, no. 1, pp. 30–31.
3. Pesti Naplo, 13 September 1936, p. 23.
4. Fischer József emlékezései 1972–74-ből [Memoirs of József Fischer from 1972–1974]. In: Lapis Angularis I. Források a Magyar Építészeti Múzeum gyűjteményéből – Hauszmann Alajos, Maróti Géza, Kozma Lajos, Kotsis Iván Fischer József, Gádoros Lajos, ed. Hajdú Virág – Prakfalvi Endre. Budapest: OMvH Magyar Építészeti Múzeum, 1995, p. 319.

More information

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Architects
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Author.- József Fischer. (1936).
Renovation.- László Kokas. (2020-2022).
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Collaborators
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Structural engineer.- Eszter Pécsi (Pollák) (Kecskemét, 1898 - New York, 1975).
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Client
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Opera singer Rózsi Walter and her husband, the textile merchant Géza Radó.
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Dates
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Construction permit on February 11th, 1936.
Completion.- Autumn, 1936.
Renovation.- Autum, 2020 - March 2022.
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Location
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St. Bajza utca, 10. 1071 Budapest. Hungary.
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Photography
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Zoltán Seidner / HMA MPDC Monument Protection Documentation Center Photographic Archives.
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Joseph Fischer (Budapest, April 12, 1901 - Ibid., February 23, 1995) was a Hungarian architect who was a member of the CIAM and one of the leading figures in modern architecture in Hungary. He was also a Social Democratic politician. The son of a printer, Fischer trained at Ármin Krausz's school as an apprentice bricklayer and began studying architecture at the University of Building Trades. In 1926, he obtained his degree as an architect and took charge of the construction of the Császár Baths.

Fischer was the editor of Tér és Forma (Space and Form), a Hungarian modern architecture magazine published between 1928 and 1946. Together with his wife he set up a construction company in 1931. In 1932, he set up an exhibition of Modern Architecture at the Margaret Island, in Budapest.

He participated in World War II and in January 1945, he was appointed Government Commissioner for Reconstruction, he chaired the Budapest Public Works Council, until 1948.

During the 1956 revolution, Fischer's house became a meeting place for Social Democratic politicians, and when the party was re-established, he was elected to its leadership. On November 3, he was appointed Minister of State in the coalition government as the candidate of his party, going underground when the revolution was defeated. He was fired from his job in 1959 and emigrated to the United States in 1965, where he received citizenship in 1969. He worked for various architecture firms there and became a member of the Hungarian group of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM). He returned to Hungary in 1978 and retired.
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Eszter Pécsi (March 8, 1898 in Kecskemét, Hungary – May 4, 1975 in New York City) Born Eszter Pollák (The family changed its name to Pécsi in 1900) and was the first Hungarian female architect and structural engineer. She designed several landmark buildings in Hungary, Austria, and the United States.

Pécsi attended the Royal College of Technology in Charlottenburg, Berlin, between 1915 and 1919. In 1918, the Hungarian government passed laws allowing women to study at universities. The following year, 1919, Pécsi returned to Hungary to finish her training at the Királyi József Műegyetem (Budapest University of Technology and Economics). She graduated the following year, on March 8, 1920, and was the first Hungarian woman to earn a degree in architecture. Pécsi was one of the first four women to study at the university, along with Marianne Sternberg-Várnay, mechanical engineer Villma Máhrer, and Irma Simonyi-Hajós.

After graduating, Pécsi worked for a decade at the Guth and Gergely architectural engineering offices in Budapest. Her work during this time included the calculation of the articulated reinforced concrete arches of the Alfréd Hajós Pool in Margitsziget. It was the first indoor swimming pool in Hungary and the largest in Europe at the time, covered by five reinforced concrete beams with a span of 31 meters and an internal height of 14 meters. The pool was a project by Alfréd Hajós, a Hungarian architect and Olympic swimmer who described it as “The great hall, surrounded by huge reinforced concrete arches, has an extremely impressive effect on the viewer, these arches span the wide space without intermediate supports. .» Pécsi also worked on the foundation of the central turbine (turbine lake) at Bánhida during those years.

On December 3, 1922, Pécsi married the modern architect József Fischer and had two sons, György and János, who grew up to become architects. The couple was a member of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), which played a key role in the expansion of modern architecture.

From 1931 to 1948, the couple ran their architecture studio. During this period, Pécsi calculated significant reinforced concrete floating slabs and tower foundations, as well as taller-than-usual steel structures, working as a structural engineer with many of the leading Hungarian architects of the day, including Fishcher and Farkas. Molnar. Her work, with original structural solutions, included the Fiumei út emergency hospital and the Kútvölgyi út hospital, the first high-rise buildings in Budapest. She also worked on various modern houses.

After the war, Pécsi inspected the bomb-damaged buildings in the capital and directed the reinforcement work on the cracked roof of the National Theater.

In 1957, Pécsi left Hungary without her husband and lived in Vienna for two years, where she worked for the architecture firm Krapfenbauer and designed the structural plans for the first multi-storey car park in the city center near the Vienna State Opera.

Her husband was fired from her job in 1959 and he applied to emigrate to join her, but was denied for seven years.

Pécsi moved to New York, where one of her sons had settled. She joined the architecture firm Farkas & Barron as a structural engineer, then worked with Marcel Breuer, the Hungarian architect and designer, and one of the leading figures at the Bauhaus. Pécsi later became a member of SOM (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill), one of the largest architecture firms in the United States, and was part of the team that drew up the structural plans for the tallest reinforced concrete frame building in the city at the time, the Hotel America, later known as the Sheraton. She also calculated the structural plans for high-rise buildings at Columbia University.

Her husband was finally able to join her in 1964, after having to wait more than seven years for a passport to be granted.

In 1965, Pécsi was awarded "Best Structural Engineer of the Year" for the special foundation method she invented that allowed skyscrapers to be built on the banks of the Hudson River.

Between 1959 and 1970 she taught at New York University.

In 1970, Pécsi was paralyzed as a result of a severe stroke. Cared for by her husband, she died on May 4, 1975 in New York City.
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