Gyöngyszem Nursery School, Szerencs

The location of the Gyöngyszem Nursery School in Szerencs is characterised by a curious duality: its site is nestled within a suburban area that took shape half a century ago, with a hidden connection to the primary school complex built in the 1980s. András Füzes organically continued both the chief architect’s site-planning concept and the architectural style that emerged from it. He revised the layout to suit the circumstances: this reorientation was also justified by the fact that it made more sense to face the building towards the shared green space of the music school and the primary school on the south side. Thus, the northern side, facing the street, is reserved for administrative functions, whilst the southern section, overlooking the green space, is for the nursery children.

This duality also characterises the building’s external appearance: from Kassa Street, the building takes on a traditional, almost small-town character, with its axis running parallel to the street and its closed-row layout. This gradually gives way, on the south-eastern side where the workshops are located, to a playful architecture that responds sensitively to its function. The southern side is dominated by the disciplined mass of the gym, which responds naturally to the architectural gestures of the nearby school buildings, and by the ‘tower’ marking the entrance, topped by a glazed ceramic gem that instinctively draws the observer’s gaze upwards.

The gables of the group rooms, which occupy the centre and very heart of the building and look out onto the garden, are a logical extension of the northern service wing running parallel to the street, and are functionally perfect: with a freely shaped floor plan, yet a well-coordinated structure, adequate natural light and a covered terrace. Yet it is precisely these three ‘huts’ that set my mind on a train of thought extending far beyond the building itself, primarily concerning the architect’s approach to design.

Perhaps the concept of ‘freedom and discipline’ is more apt here: the lack of external freedom demanded a high degree of discipline in the expression of inner freedom in the period before the change of regime. The ‘stakes’ attached to the intellectual message of any given work were far higher at the time of the founding of the Sárospatak House of Culture than they are with today’s public investment projects. The majority perceive this lack of stakes as a kind of real or figurative Some respond with a sense of grey, whilst others opt for the extravagance that I would classify as an authorial architectural style. András Füzes (quite rightly) follows the latter path, emphasising the painterly quality – so characteristic of him – in his buildings. This is evident not only in the shaping of volumes and the use of materials, but also in the organisation of the floor plans. We see the ‘flowing spaces’ developed by F. L. Wright, but without the ‘integrity’ to which he also referred.

Whilst we are on the subject of the integrity of Wright’s organic architecture, perhaps the organic continuation of organic architecture – thirteen years after Imre Makovecz’s death – could be, or indeed must be, regionalist architecture, as a matter of course, if you will. This may be the overarching idea that provides structure, that can organise our buildings in today’s disintegrating, fragmented world, and that can also save us from the all-encompassing greyness.

Erhardt Gábor

(Országépítő, 2024/4, details)