The search for a Hungarian national style: The Fiatalok and the National Folk Movement

The Fiatalok, or "Young Ones," a group of seven Hungarian architects, studied and worked together for a decade before World War I. They were Karoly Kos, Dezso&huml; Zrumeczky, Bela Janszky, Lajos Kozma, Denes Gyorgyi, Valer Mende, and Lajos Tatray. Most of their achievement was architectural, but it also encompassed graphic and furniture design and teaching in decorative arts schools. As young innovators, the Fiatalok developed the formal and material aspects of Transylvanian folk architecture, adapting Arts and Crafts ideology to their own architectural pursuits.;This work presents the Fiatalok as main contributors to the Hungarian National Folk style between 1906 and 1914, which exhibits vernacular motifs and forms. It links architecture to the discovery and study of vernacular tradition and to a contemporary ideological current that stressed the originality of the Magyar culture as an expression of patriotic feelings. Its analysis of the Fiatalok's architecture brings to light common characteristics among contemporary European artistic and architectural movements. Specifically, it relates the Hungarian National Folk style with the aesthetic expression of the Secession movement and with the National Romantic movement for its search of a national identity in regional vernacular cultures. This study shows that the English Arts and Crafts movement was a major source of influence for the Fiatalok's architectural and aesthetic ideas.;Based on a selection of buildings, this work individualizes the characteristics of each Fiatalok's architecture and discusses the Fiatalok's active contribution in the development of a domestic architecture adapted to a modern urban life. Bela Janszky, a Fiatalok, and in particular Karoly Kos, the Fiatalok's spiritual leader, wrote about the development of their architectural ideas and the National Folk style. These writings are a major tool for the interpretation of the Fiatalok's architecture.;Through the analysis of Kos's original interpretation of a Transylvanian vernacular architecture, both inside and outside Transylvania, this work explores the revival of regional architecture as a means of expressing a regional identity and the development of local preservation. After World War I, Kos's seminal influence in the preservation of a Hungarian tradition in Transylvania offered an alternative to the development of socialist architecture in Romania.