Ákos Moravánszky


Ákos Moravánszky, is a Swiss-Hungarian architect, theorist, historian and Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Architectural Theory at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Moravánszky is regarded as one of the world's leading architecture historians of Central European architecture.

Biography

Moravánszky studied architecture at the Budapest University of Technology where he received his diploma in 1974. Subsequently, he worked in Budapest at KÖZTI, an architectural design office specialized for public buildings. In 1977, he started his doctoral studies at the Technical University of Vienna as a Herder-Fellow, receiving his degree in 1980. In 1983 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the architectural journal of the Association of Hungarian Architects, Magyar Épitőművészet. He was invited as an Alexander-von-Humboldt Research Fellow to the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. He worked as Research Associate at the Getty Center in Santa Monica, California and as Visiting Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Between 1996 and 2016 he was in charge of the Chair of Architectural Theory at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at the ETH Zurich. He was Visiting Professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest in 2003/04 and at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona in 2017/18.

Writings on architecture

Moravánszky is especially well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture in Central Europe, and for his role in the development of a theory of materiality in architecture. His books include Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1918 which was the first systematic work focusing on the development of architectural modernism in the countries of the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. “Ákos Moravánszky’s Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture 1867-1918 turned modernism into a simple architectural alternative among others” – wrote French architectural historian Carmen Popescu.
Results of this research were published earlier in his books Die Architektur der Donaumonarchie and Die Erneuerung der Baukunst: Wege zur Moderne in Mitteleuropa. William M. Johnston, the outstanding American historian focusing on European cultural history emphasized in his book Zur Kulturgeschichte Õsterreichs und Ungarns 1890-1938 Moravánszky’s pioneering achievement and his “virtuosity in weaving together architectural and intellectual history”. An important aspect of Moravánszky’s work was the ethnographic research of architects into the material culture of the village, and their interest for vernacular buildings. In August 1996, he organized an international conference at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna. The papers of the conference have been published in Moravánszky’s edited volume Das entfernte Dorf. The significance of this achievement has been recognized by scholars working later on issues of regionalism and vernacular architecture. The research that started with his doctoral thesis and early writings on the architecture in the Habsburg monarchy, and concluded with the series of conferences East West Central on architecture and urbanism in post-war Europe, held at the ETH Zurich, with particular emphasis on the former “Eastern Bloc” countries. The results of the conferences have been published in three volumes. Reviewers praised the results as the “Re-unification of Europe in architectural history” and as “one of the most interesting works dealing with the period”
The question of materiality was discussed in seminars held at the doctoral school of the Institut gta / ETH Zurich, the Architectural Association in London, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art in Budapest, and at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona. He summed up his stance towards materiality as in his book Metamorphism: Material Change in Architecture as follows:
"The interpretation of material outlined in this introduction progresses from constructional principles via cultural meaning to sensory experience. Accordingly, the technical literature is progressively complemented by texts which use the power of material as an argument for a post-human materialism and as a tool for the ecologization of culture. This book is neither a construction handbook nor a work of architectural history, neither a treatise on the iconology of materials nor a plea for a new materialism. By focusing our attention on ideas that have arisen in close connection with the practice of design it seeks to significantly advance the discourse about material. The examination of Semper’s theory and the presentation of theoretical discussions about materiality cannot be separated from the investigation of architectural examples. The identification and recognition of materiality can counter the dematerialization which globalization is leaving in its wake."
In 2015 a collection of Moravánszky's writings over a period of over 20 years was collated and published by the gta Verlag under the title Lehrgerüste.

Notable publications