Architecture and Nation
In recent years, the relationship between architecture and representation has gained new significance. National architecture policies that articulate professional, cultural, and social goals have been developed in several countries, sparking debates about the connections between the built environment and social, political values, and identities. Concepts that were long overlooked, such as beauty, taste, the reconstruction of social memory, or political identity, have come to the forefront of contemporary thinking.
KÉK sees these changes as important and exciting and is launching a series of programs to create a comprehensive domestic discourse currently lacking, to discuss the defining questions of this phenomenon. The aim of the program is to formulate good questions, present the possible major viewpoints, and propose suggestions in the hope that the series will inspire further programs, debates, and concepts in domestic professional and public thinking.
EVENTS
The series titled Architecture and Nation, between 2023 and 2025, examined the relationship between architecture and national identity over ten occasions, in both historical and contemporary contexts. During the debates, experts, architects, and researchers exchanged ideas on questions such as the changing concept of identity, the national character of contemporary architecture, and the role of architectural regulations and community codes.
POSTER COLLECTION AND EXHIBITION
We are organizing a series of exhibitions where we invite domestic architects and professionals to demonstrate through examples what they consider the common heritage of Hungarian architecture, an indispensable foundation of our identity.
The submitted posters were exhibited. The goal of the exhibition is to showcase a currently non-existent, yet possible collective vision of a domestic architectural canon, which might consist of various personal canons. This cannot compensate for the many decades of backlog in domestic architectural thinking, but it can provide inspiration for the first steps.
The submitted posters can be viewed at the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wHaFE13IXYm7h5nodOMsBeH9jpaQmw3G/view?usp=drive_link
PUBLICATION:
As the conclusion of the program series, the Architecture and Nation publication appeared, summarising the main topics, debates, and lessons of the event series. The buildings featured on the posters submitted within the personal canons program were organized into a database by the KÉK team, visualised with the help of infographics. The purpose of the publication is not merely to document but to provide a basis for future research in domestic architectural thinking. Additionally, we invited experts dealing with architects to contribute essays from various approaches to enrich the dialogue concerning the national architectural canon.
The project is realized with the support of the National Cultural Fund.
