INTRODUCTION
It has been twenty years since the Tokaj Wine Region was declared a UNESCO Historic Cultural Landscape and thus a locality of universal value, a part of the world heritage. How is it possible that local value and global value can be ’at peace’ in the same sentence? No conflict? No hierarchical competition? Can the two perhaps be the same? This international title primarily recognises the centuries old tradition of viti- and viniculture, but it also contains the architecture of 27 settlements.
Fernando González Gortázar, a Mexican avant-garde (!) architect and sculptor, talked about this in the following way:
“I am convinced that truly great architecture is always regional and that universal architecture, which the world takes an interest in, is always regional architecture… In culture only things that are connected to a place can have universal validity. It is regional art that, drawing on the resources of a given country or region, can bear the kind of novelty with which it can enrich the world’s panorama.”
Here is a sentence in which local value and global value are also regarded as identical, like for example the art of Bartók and Kodály. During the long centuries our ancestors shaped the Tokaj Wine Region into a place of unique and inimitable value, into a cultural landscape, primarily shaping the genius loci by developing the culture of grape cultivation and winemaking but also that of house building. Can the international ‘up-to-date’ trend, changing trends, modern ‘isms’, theories and the inorganic concept of creating ‘something new out of nothing’ be authentic in and applicable to a place like Tokaj? Something else is needed here: the spirit of the place requires something else: sensitivity, a medial role and submerging into architectural history. However, this should not be done through mimicry, through the mere imitation of the past but through commitment to progress being part of the process. The key is PROPORTION with tradition being the source and progessiveness proportionately applied to the goal. Only through this can the noble generational approach, task and practice of CONTINUITY be conceived. In other words, we should not create ‘something new out of nothing’ but ‘something new out of the old’. Here the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary approach is natural.
The approach seeking to understand the spirit of the place started back in the 1980s with Imre Makovecz’s projects in Sárospatak and was followed by Ferenc Salamin’s architectural activity in Szerencs and Csaba Bodonyi’s work as the chief architect of Tokaj. The simultaneous presence of tradition and progressiveness is well exemplified by the reductive wine-making technology that took root in the early 1990s. This technological progress was translated into architecture too, creating a ‘chateau’ system in the region (and in Hungary), the design of which was entrusted to good architects. A high-standard wine architecture, which can be regarded as regional, developed in the Tokaj Wine Region, which attracted the attention of the rest of the world. So what exactly are the values regarding settlement structure, scale, roof shapes, proportions, details and materials in the architecture of the Tokaj Wine Region that are worth following? Incorporating these into designs – similarly to the proportion of tradition and progress – depends on specific projects and the sensitivity of builders and architects.
The world heritage status comes with greater attention devoted by the state, the municipalities and the architectural profession to the approach seen as desirable in this region, but the most crucial factor in this context is shaping attitudes that can serve as inspiration for the builders and architects and can thus create a set of customs: a culture of its own. Important institutional support is provided by the world heritage architectural planning council, whose members in the Tokaj wine Region are experienced architects and chief architects. Consultations with the planning council helps many an architect to embrace the evolutionary approach aimed at exploring the spirit of the place, which is in dire contrast to the sadly frequent imitation of examples of ’rootlessness’ lacking this content. Professional control can also help in the design of large hall structures that are at variance with tradition but these can also find their place in the region with the application of an inventive breakdown of scale, green ideas and local materials.
It would be expedient to develop a chief architect system with its competence extending to all the settlements of the region, which would work efficiently in the towns (Sátoraljaújhely, Sárospatak, Tokaj, Szerencs). The solar panels appearing more and more on the roofs of buildings are of course useful but damage the traditional appearance of settlements, which is a value to be protected; air and ground(water) pumps would be more favourable means of producing energy using renewable sources.
Each one of the new building, renovation and monument reconstruction projects implemented in the last thirty years or more and documented in detail in this volume provides a good example of the organic continuation and development of the architecture of the Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape through seeking to find harmony between the spirit of the place and the spirit of the age. While they might vary in their architectural quality, each one of the buildings discussed in this book broadens the professional path that can lead, in the long term, to a creative method and unique architectural culture characteristic of the region overall, combining tradition with progress and worthy of the Tokaj-Hegyalja world heritage cultural landscape.
Csaba Bodonyi DLA, former chief architect of Tokaj
Introduction from the book TOKAJ, the architecture of the wine region, 2022.
