Internalizing the Rejected - Sensitization training to embrace the Hungarian Cube

Year ︎  2019
Outcome ︎ Solo Exhibiton
Location ︎ Vienna
Team ︎ Lilla Árkovics, Levente Borenich, Bernadett Csendes, Attila Róbert Csóka, Szabolcs Molnár, Dávid Smiló

Photo ︎ Balázs Danyi

500.000 Hungarian Cubes are out there inhabiting the Hungarian landscape. While the quantity is massive, the impact of the 500.000 pieces totally avoided the Hungarian architectural culture. Thinking and discussing the Cube House is still not a thing. Rejection and ridicule surrounded this piece, and only few isolated projects aimed to understand the meaning, the representation and the aesthetic qualities of the Cube House in theoretical manner. The exhibition dove into this banal piece of Hungarian architecture and reframes, rescales and recontextualizes it. We aimed to pull it out of its social, and political circumstances where most of the debates evaluate and interpret it. This exhibition was a sensitization training of understanding the pure geometry, ornamentation and diagram of the Hungarian Cube.

It was neither a celebration nor canonization, but a naive and playful journey through imagination and creativity, which are key conceptions of our studio. Hence, presenting pieces of architectural ideas about the Hungarian Cube, was also an apropos. A tool which bears the identity of a post-socialist country, the same identity which we have, and also a good piece to present our concern about understanding, and think of built environment and architecture with design and theoretic approach. According to this, the presented outcomes are organized to themes which also refer to main topics of our studio we’ve been interested in the recent years. Like the question of bigness and or self mythologies, the problem of the surface and the wish to ornament, the aim of formal innovation, and also an eager attempt to link Eastern European knowledge to international tendencies and vica versa.

Internalizing the rejected was not just an exhibition but a conscious role playing activity on our part as well. What if we are architects who are able to accept the Hungarian Cube without any exterminating criticism or blind worship? From this point of view this exhibition is also experimenting with recalibration of mindsets and professional beliefs, hence presenting precisely our working, thinking and designing methods at Paradigma Ariadné.

Special thanks to: Ferenc Annus, Marina Annus, Lilla Árkovics, Levente Borenich, Bernadett Csendes, Sára Dányádi, Anikó Hóbor, Katharina Roters, László Rajk, László Smiló, Judit Székely

This exhibition was realized thanks to Architektur Im Magazin who invited us to make our first solo exhibition.