The Károly Kós Association was established in the fall of 1989 in an attempt at formulating a novel social system that was to be based upon Rudolf Steiner’s precepts and took the shaping of the environment as its starting point. The charter members endeavored to allow the potential of the Hungarian organic architecture, that had been achieving an ever-increasing professional and general recognition for twenty-five years then, to become a sustainable and transmittable social power of great efficacy. Organic architecture has nowhere else in the modern world developed so great and socially vital importance as in Hungary. Despite the fact that organic architecture is not a matter of style but of attitude and approach this trend has characteristics peculiar to its environment. Like the architecture of the turn of the century it is also locality- and tradition-bound. It was these idiosyncracies that brought great international attention to Hungarian organic architecture in the eighties making the Hungarian creations the mold-breaking bearers of a very important message in the eyes of those abroad.

The exhibition stages the most significant works done from the mid-sixties on and may help you understand what the organic approach and way of creation is all about. Not all of these artists do necessarily belong to the Association – the very purpose of this exhibition is to bring attention to the profusion and quality the creations of the organic thinking in Hungary represent. This living architecture, which is in quest of the ways out of the economic, social and environmental crisis, continues to preserve the conditions of human creation with an animated force in the face of the ever-antagonistic circumstances created by those opposing its approach.

János Gerle