BÉLA LAJTA VIRTUAL ARCHIVES
The new English version of our homepage will be presented to the international audience on 06.06.2011 at the “Multilateral Exchange” of the Réseau Art Nouveau Network in Barcelona. The topic of the workshop is: “New Technologies and Social Networks in the Diffusion of Heritage: Challenges and Opportunities”.
The programme of the Multilateral Exchange :
http://www.artnouveau-net.eu/Network/Actions/Exchanges/tabid/141/language/en-GB/Default.aspx
Presentation for the workshop:
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Béla Lajta architect – exhibition of the Budapest City Archives.
12.10.2010 – 11.02.2011
The Municipal Archives of Budapest decided to dedicate this autumn’s architectural history exhibition to the 90th anniversary of the death of Béla Lajta. The Archives, in cooperation with other private and public collections considered it appropriate to organize an exhibition presenting Lajta’s oeuvre, even if (due to our limited possibilities) in its barest outlines.
The exhibition seeks partly to present to the public a more detailed picture of the architect’s personality. Its first part shows some sources of inspiration in Lajta’s career (only loosely following the actual chronology of his biography), and maps out some components of his social and intellectual network. Apart from hitherto unknown architectural sources and documents concerning the Leitersdorfer family and Lajta’s major commissioners, we can showcase curiosities like some representative pieces from the collection of photographs Lajta acquired during his study trips abroad and items from his collection of Muslim ceramic fragments, folk artefacts and liturgical objects.
The second part of the exhibition wishes to give a more detailed picture of Lajta’s major works, which the members of the public interested in the architectural heritage of Budapest might know fairly well, but which have survived only in a transformed or incomplete shape – often becoming so already during Lajta’s lifetime. As far as the fragmented sources allow us to do so, we try to present the subsequent phases of the planning process, which often show great differences between the stages – as well, as some typical features of the final building, and, in some cases, the stages of the following transformation process as well. We are lucky to do this using mainly planning sheets, photographs and documents that has never featured at exhibitions before. A separate unit within the exhibition outlines the work of those architects – Béla Málnai and Lajos Kozma, among others – who started their careers at Lajta’s office to became renowned later in their own right.
List of the artworks shown at the exhibition:
Lajta_Bela_kiallitas_mutargyjegyzek
Poster of the exhibition:
Invitation card of the exhibition: