English
The Ludwig Museum in Budapest once again proposes an important retrospective exhibition, which presents the itinerary of artistic investigation and creation of the famous Hungarian architect and philosopher Yona Friedman. The exhibition will open its doors on the 28th of October and can be visited until the 8th of January 2012, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am until 8pm.
Yona Friedman was born in Budapest in 1923. During the Second World war, forced to escape due to the Nazi occupation, he went into exile to the city of Haifa, where he lived for over a decade before moving to Paris in 1957. In 1966 he obtained French citizenship and he established himself permanently there. It was during 1956, during the 10th Modern Architecture Congress (which took place in Dubrovnik), that he gave his inaugural contribution to architectonic theory and urban development, with his ´Manifest of Mobile Architecture´, which contributed definitively to the fixation of certain canons of contemporary urban planning.
When, in 1958, he finally published his ´Mobile Architecture´ manifesto, he focused himself not as much on the mobility of the constructions but rather on a new mobility of the citizens, more open and free. It was the possibility of building structures which didn´t determine or guide rigidly the movement of the people, so that they could move in different ways around these spaces. As well as a new form of conceiving the places, it was an interesting metaphor of the modern man (and of the mobility of societies) and a new interpretation of the relation between the spaces which they go through and the ones they live in.
No more ´middle man´ then, that stereotype in which modern architecture had founded its previous projects which, of course, reflected the necessities of a very different society, more rooted and with a more limited range of possibilities (or which was perceived as more limited). Now, all of that had become obsolete. It did not make sense to underestimate the ´use´ of the space and the role of the people in the creation of itself. A new way of conceiving the places had to be invented, transferring the focus of the construction to the movement. Its invention brought him to formulate the base of a new idea of a city, the ´spacial city´, or mobile city: here, the ideal formulation of projects which were still visionary, included buildings which touched the ground in the smallest possible dimensions; which could be dismantled and rebuilt in another place very quickly; and, also, which contemplated the possibility of being modified according to the will and taste of its inhabitants.
A great contribution to urban development and contemporary architecture then, of which we can appreciate the results and get to know the phases of this important retrospective at the Ludwig Museum. For more information: http://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=763&menuId=44
We recommend that you rent apartments in Budapest and come to enjoy a stay in this cultural capital, so you can get to know the city and the work of the architect Yona Friedman.
Translated by: aleixgwilliam