Ödön Lechner

Odon Lechner ( born August 27, 1845 in Buda, † June 10, 1914 in Budapest) was a Hungarian architect, who achieved a great popularity due to its influenced by Art Nouveau buildings.

Life

The origin of the family is suspected because of the name in Bavaria, the family immigrated in the 17th century over the Burgenland in Budapest. His father ran a brickyard. He studied architecture in Berlin.

1875 to 1878 he studied in Paris the formal languages ​​of Art Nouveau know. Together with his friend Vilmos Zsolnay, whose family ran a factory for construction ceramics, he was the inventor of the " pyrogranite " material mentioned, a green-gray granite-like artificial stone, like the Lechner used in his buildings. At his buildings were numerous items from this manufacture use. At the drafts of his buildings Gyula Pártos was often involved.

Several large buildings emerged in the last decade of the 19th century, when Hungary began to appreciate his sense of nationality and created many buildings in Budapest. Even with the construction of the town hall in Szeged, he found great recognition and sat in the bar with the construction of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, which is dominated by floral elements. The interior was painted over 1920 white, so as not to detract from the exhibits. Another great building was erected with the building of the geological institute of the University, Geological Museum today. With the Post Office Savings Bank, which is part of the building of the National Bank today came another jewel of Art Nouveau in Budapest. Here he continued to own the idea of ​​a Hungarian national style. He was so unlike Otto Wagner, who also erected a building for the Post Office Savings Bank in Vienna, it took the view that modern buildings in large cities were to design independent of national considerations.

In his buildings Lechner used decorative elements from Hungarian folk art, whose sources were suspected at the time of the Hungarian nationalism in Persia or India.

In the reception of his works, he is seen as representative of the earlier Hungarian Secession, some compare his work with that of Antoni Gaudí. The around 1975, bulged Hungarian organic architecture with its main representatives Imre Makovecz and György Csete can be seen in its emphasis on folk art and national element as a partial continuation of certain coined by Lechner traditions.

Buildings

• Szeged Town Hall (1882 )
• Kecskemét Town Hall ( 1892-94 )
• Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest (1893 - 1896) together with Gyula Pártos
• Geological Museum, Budapest (1898 - 1899)
• Ladislauskirche, Budapest ( 1894-96 )
• Post Office Savings Bank in Budapest (1899-1901), now part of the National Bank and can not be visited.
• "Blue" Elizabeth Church Bratislava, 1908

Hall of the Museum of Applied Arts Budapest, detail

Entrance of the Museum of Applied Arts Budapest

Elizabeth Church