COMMUNITY AND ARCHITECTURE

A novel aspiration can be seen in each of the contemporary architectural trends: the increasing inclusion of communal aspects. New concepts, such as ’social architecture’ and ’participative planning’, have emerged in architectural discourse, bringing the relations between the community and architecture into focus.

Three from among the new trends – interconnected yet distinct from one another in their character – are highlighted at this exhibition with the aim of clarifying the subtle differences and providing clearer definitions for categories that are often confused in public discourse. The Architecture and Education room showcases the most successful examples of architecture in Hungarian public education and workshops established around this idea. The importance of spiritual/intellectual self-construction is at the focus of the section titled Community-building, which surveys art festivals and community programmes that are equally well-known in Hungary and abroad. Architectural aspirations supporting disadvantaged communities are presented in the part of the exhibition titled Solidaric Architecture. Regarding its status, social architecture will soon be on a par with high architecture, this paradigm shift being perhaps the most important and definitely one of the crucial developments in the recent past.

In each of the three categories, visitors can view projects run in Hungary, while some of them were also implemented on the international architectural scene. It is important for us to emphasise that the presented communities, workshops and summer camp-building initiatives are complemented with projects realised as actual architectural works and are spatially highlighted. In regard to their content and form, these same projects span over to the works presented in the central exhibition room.