Walter Rozsi - Creative

Walter Rózsi Villa

The Walter Rózsi Villa is the new home of Hungarian architecture.

About The Villa

The Rózsi Walter Villa was built in the neighborhood of the sanatoriums on Városligeti Fasor Lane, on a lot subdivided from the site of the Grünwald Sanatorium. The villa was designed by an outstanding figure of Hungarian Modern architecture, József Fischer, for the renowned opera singer Rózsi Walter as well as her husband Géza Radó and their daughter Marika Radó-Walter. Eszter Pécsi, the first female Hungarian structural engineer and Fischer’s wife, played a major role in the design, being responsible for the building’s reinforced concrete structure.

Fischer designed several Modern villas of a similar scale during this period, and they show the influence of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. The Walter Villa, which was erected in under six months in 1936, is an outstanding work of Fischer’s architecture and at the same time is a significant example of Hungarian Modern residential architecture. A roof terrace was made atop the three-story, flat-roofed building. Its ground plan follows the layout typical of Modernist villas. There were service spaces, the caretaker’s apartment, and a garage on the ground floor. The first floor had a living room, dining room, and a salon, and the upper story had bedrooms, a child’s room, and bathrooms. A characteristic Modernist feature was that while the street-front façade was closed and had a simple design, the garden façade was more open, with the large windows of the rooms looking out on the yard. One of the special features of the house is the garden stairway, which links the balcony on the upper floor directly to the yard. The stairway was demolished sometime after 1949 but has been rebuilt during the most recent rehabilitation, thus completing the reconstruction of the garden façade.

After the Second World War, the new hospital of the Ministry of Interior, later named the Korvin Ottó Hospital, was established at 9-13 Városligeti Fasor Lane, which included the nationalized Rózsi Walter Villa as well. Of the three sanatoriums, the one in the middle, the Glück Institute, was demolished, and then the interior of the site was almost completely built up in the following decades.

The former villa of Rózsi Walter was used for decades as a nursery school and a pediatrician’s office. The hospital moved out of the site in 2009, leaving behind a collection of buildings that were worn out and in bad condition. Although the Rózsi Walter Villa and the sanatoriums had been remodeled several times, their original character-defining architectural details were still recognizable. The building complex stood vacant for the next decade.

Draw your modern villa

Bauhaus Style and

The Bauhaus was an avant-garde design studio that operated in Germany between 1919 and 1933. Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the school incorporated art, architecture, and in particular, distinctive furniture that would become known as Bauhaus style.

These early designers were revolutionary in their experimental designs, which had a simplicity, harmonious geometry, and industrial-like practicality; the idea was that high design should be cheap enough to be utilized by the masses. Mass production was the aim, and the school's slogan and its core raison d'etre became Art into Industry.

Although classic Bauhaus colours tended to be neutral—most often chromium, black and white, brown, and grey; occasionally bright, primary colours would be used, such as in the tubular chairs above and the baby cradle below. Unlike traditional cabinet makers, the Bauhaus designers were prepared to experiment with innovative materials—commonly, their furniture included combinations of steel, wood, leather, plywood, and woven textiles.

Design-wise, the studio artists turned away from anything overly fussy and pretentious—they wanted clean, modern lines uncluttered by stylistic affectations. The school was greatly influenced by Modernism, which had begun in the 1880s as a rejection of tradition and of many of the values it encompassed.

They virtually reinvented furniture design and produced functional, clean-lined shapes that seemed impossibly modern. The idea was to break a chair down to its most minimal form, and indeed Marcel Breuer predicted that eventually, the chair would disappear altogether:

and Design

Stages and Spaces

Modern Houses in Hungary 1928-1945

Sunlight, fresh air, and openness - just a few of the key phrases of modern architecture that blossomed in the interwar period. Taking the original functions of the villa's spaces as a basis, the exhibition presents the architecture of modern dwellings of the time with the aid of these catch phrases.

OPENNESS

The first floor of the Rózsi Walter Villa is a large and airy space that opens towards the garden with its large windows, doors, and terrace. Folding doors allow the space to be used in a variety of ways. This type of openness and flexibility was characteristic of the residential architecture of the period. These guiding principles were favored by the architects of the era for small residences, apartment houses, and luxury villas alike.

PLAY

Modernist children's rooms and nursery school interiors reflected the new theories of child rearing and education, which understood that play is also a process of learning. Furnishings that were adapted to a child's scale and that were easy to clean provided much greater freedom than previously to the little ones.

WORK

Modern architects provided suitable conditions for work. This was facilitated by multifunctional work-stations. The drafting table and tubular steel chairs displayed in the study evoke the workspaces of the two creators of the villa, the architect Josef Fischer and the structural engineer Eszter Pécsi, as well as Marcel Breuer, the world-famous designer of tubular steel furniture.

COMFORT

Colorful household textiles, furniture that followed the line of the human body, electricity, and the most important entertainment system, the radio, were a part of the comfort of modern residences.

HYGIENE AND HEALTH

All the conveniences were a fundamental expecta- ton for modern residential buildings. Materials that were easy to keep clean promoted hygiene, and the large windows and terraces provided ventilation that supported health.

COLOR

According to popular opinion, modern architecture is white. However, sometimes colors were used on the houses that may surprise people today.

“The mind is like an umbrella – it functions best when open”

Draw your best chair

Women of the Villa

Eszter Pécsi

Structural engineer of the Walter Rózsi villa. She is considered to be the first Hungarian woman engineer, And the wife of architect József Fischer.

She ran her own office from 1930. Between the two world wars, she designed the structural engineering of many buildings in Budapest

She and her husband also participated in CIAM's work and conferences.

1930 1958

In 1956, Pécsi emigrated, first to Vienna. Then she followed her son Pécsi, he lived and worked in the US 1958 onwards, where he had a distinguished engineering career and won awards. His work includes the structural designs for the Hotel Americana in NYC and two tower blocks at Columbia University.

Pécsi

One of the first women to study engineering in Hungary, Pécsi was one of the founders of the Budapest Technical University and a major architect of the city's Margitsziget Sports Centre.

She won the title of "Best Structural Engineer of the Year" in 1965 for the special foundation method she developed for the construction of high-rise buildings on the banks of the Hudson River.

1965 1975

She sadly suffered a stroke, paralysed on one side, cared for by her husband.

Eszter Pécsi died of another stroke in the year 1975.

She was laid to rest in the Farkasrét cemetery, where her husband, who died in 1995, is also buried.

Rózsi Walter 1921

She was a student at the Ballet School of the Opera House between 1914-1919, She was known as the Hungarian Jeritza. Rózsi Walter was a pupil of the legendary Wagner tenorist György Anthes at the Liszt Academy, graduating in 1921.

on 21 September 1921, she made her debut in the title role of Puccini's Tosca at the Municipal Theatre.

She became a prima donna of the Royal Hungarian Opera House, which means that she mostly played the leading female roles in productions. She sang in the title roles of Sybill, Giuditta, Manon Lescaut, Turandot, Aida and Madame Butterfly. She used her ballet training to great effect as Salome, a dance taught to her by Olga Szentpál. One of her greatest successes was the role of Silvana in Respighi's A láng (The Flame).

Walter Rozália Mária, born on 21 September 1899 in Nagymaros.

She

1942 1945

After the war,1945 onwards she had few roles, retiring in 1948.

1974

The family survived the Second World War in Budapest by sheltering in the villa. After their home was nationalized, the Radó-Walter family moved to Szüret Street in Buda in 1949. Husband and wife lived there until the end of their lives, and they now rest in the Farkasrét Cemetery since 1974

was elected an Honorary Member of the Opera House.

Mária Radó-Walter

1936

as a child, she wanted to be an actress. She appeared in the film "Pacsirta" (supporting role) in 1936. Even as a little girl she was often featured in theatre magazines.

after graduating, she studied sociology in Switzerland. After her studies, she wanted to settle in Switzerland or England, but was not accepted, so she moved to South America, where she had an uncle. There she took up singing and later became a writer.

Maria Radó-Walter was born in 1929.

Radó-Walter

1965 2021

In her Personal life she started a family in Buenos Aires, and had three sons with her husband who was a chemical engineer.

in August 2021, three of her sons contacted the MDK staff by e-mail, offering to participate in the preparation of the exhibition and the publications related to the villa. The exhibition is also enriched by photos received from their family. Maria has also preserved a memoir (in Spanish).

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