The short 15-20 minute presentations approached the architects from different perspectives. They all shared similar traits of the ongoing research process, leaving certain questions open and problems unanswered.
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén, a curator at HMA MPDC, presented the life and work of Auguszta Kurz, a Czech-German artist. Auguszta Kurz, who graduated in Prague with her husband Gusztáv Feuer and later founded a successful interior design studio in Budapest, has recently come to the public eye thanks to Dóra Reichart's study and the Art Deco exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts. The couple's daughter, Mrs Ferenc Tüdős née Helga Feuer, has preserved important documents of their work, and thanks to her we have been given an exciting insight into the couple's life between the two world wars. The lecture also touched on the episode of 1939, when the Feuer couple wanted to emigrate to London; this did not succeed, but the family survived WW2 in Budapest.
The work of Elzy Lázár, little known in Hungary, was presented by István Pásztor, an architect from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. István Pásztor is a PhD student at the Cluj University of Technology, who has been exploring the city's modern heritage for more than a decade. Archival sources from Vienna and Milan, as well as local historical research, are revealing more and more of his otherwise almost hidden oeuvre. Although Elzy Lázár only worked as an architect for a few years, and her only work to date is the Tătaru House in Cluj, designed as a collaborator in the office of Gio Ponti, this alone deserves wider attention.
The conference organiser, Dániel Kovács, a curator at the HMA MPDC and the initiator of the Hungarian Women Architects Project, presented the research results on the early pioneers, focusing on those who graduated between 1917 and 1941. Ella Kohlbach, the first Hungarian woman to graduate from the College of Berlin-Charlottenburg, whose archives has been researched at the New York Public Library, was discussed. The archives of the ETH Zurich offered new insights into the three Hungarian women who graduated there: Franciska Bettelheim (1934), Éva Kepes (1931) and Elza Diamant (1917), the latter being the first female master builder to graduate from the institution. Last but not least, Felicia Thier-Szabó, who graduated from the Budapest University of Technology in 1941 following the footsteps of her two sisters, was also a major character of the lecture, although she was the only one of the three to have a serious architectural career.
Art historian Dóra Reichart is continuing her research in the archives of Zsuzsa Kovács, which she began as a researcher at the Museum of Applied Arts. Active as an interior designer between the two world wars and as an architect afterwards, Kovács is notable for her versatility: her original interior and furniture designs, which followed Austrian and later German fashions of the time but were also highly original, her achievements in type design after 1945, her commercial commissions and her architectural designs deserve more recognition. Fortunately, her considerable archives at the Museum of Applied Arts will be of great help in this respect.
The archives of Mária Anna Fejes, recently added to the collection of the HMA MPDC, is the work of Fanni Izabella Magyaróvári, a curator at our institution. In addition to her professional career, her work in the field of serial planning, her role in the administration of the Construction Ministry and presence in community organisation also deserves special mention. Anna Fejes joined the International Union of Women Architects (UIFA) almost from the beginning and worked briefly in the Paris office of its founder, Solange d'Herbez de la Tour. The documents and photographs relating to this work form a very valuable part of the legacy, much of which has yet to be processed.
Lilla Kammermann, a student at the Bauhaus-Universität in Dessau, studied the work of Mrs János Brenner, née Zsuzsanna Becker. The designer, who began her career in the 1950s, has made important contributions to the Gubacsi Road housing estate and the Lakatos Street housing estate school. She worked on the latter with her husband János Brenner. They moved with him to Dresden, GDR, in 1971 for four years, where Zsuzsanna worked at TU-Projekt, the design company of the Technical University of Dresden; her time here also offers an insight into the daily life and tasks of a contemporary German office. The lecture was complemented on the spot by personal contributions from the architect's son János Brenner.
The last two presentations of the conference dealt with contemporaries from a specific perspective. Máté Érsek, an architecture student at the Budapest University of Technology, presented the unrealised works of Zsófia Csomay. Her designs for evangelical churches (including the Dunaújváros church, which won second prize in the competition), a studio building in Budapest and an adaptable atrium house, which she put on paper in 2010, exemplify the versatility of the artist.
In her presentation, architect Blanka Gill explored the work of Mária Józsa from Győr and Ágnes Kravár, who lived and worked in Budapest, through similar points in their respective careers. Through the beginning of their careers, their first jobs, the masters who influenced them, the knowledge and activities they taught them, a surprising number of similarities emerged between the two careers, which at first glance seem quite different.
