ANDRE P. CZEGLEDY
University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Villas of Wealth: A Historical Perspective
on New Residences in Post-Socialist
Hungary
THE CONTEMPORARY INTEREST in large-scale residential villas
has found new favor among the economic elite of Hungary. Having
chosen to express their social position in the material and aesthetic
terms of their existence, do the architectural conventions of the elite
now reflect indigenous or foreign tastes and traditions? This paper
investigates how the construction of such sumptuous residences draws
on a variety of sources for inspiration mirroring both the new
potentials and the new disparities generated in post-socialist, central
eastern Europe today. [Architecture, urban history, elite, postsocialist,
Hungary]
COMING UNDER THE COLLOQUIAL term of villa, the new
luxury residences along Strawberry Street, Quince Street and
many of the other thoroughfares in District XI of Budapest are a
stark contrast to the houses and residential complexes beside them. From
their private, off-road parking spaces to their manicured lawns and neat
mansard roofs, from the expensive, foreign materials used in their
construction to the impressive size of their lots and frontage, no passerby
can mistake the wealth and prestige which they proclaim from behind a
variety of discrete half-wall fences and immaculately clipped topiary.
Situated in the quiet suburb of Gazdagret off the western bank of the
Danube river, these houses resemble neither the modest bungalow homes
of the original neighborhood nor the eleven-story concrete apartment
buildings of the Soviet-inspired housing estate built directly to the south.
In a way which finds recurrent parallel throughout nearby urban
districts nestled amidst the Buda hills of the capital city, the construction
of such sumptuous residences side-by-side with their neighbors mirrors
both the new potentials and the new disparities being generated in postsocialist
central eastern Europe today. How have the elite of Hungary
expressed their position in the material and aesthetic terms of existence?
245
246 City & Society
Do architectural conventions reflect indigenous or foreign tastes?
Answering these, and other related questions will be the main subject
matter for the discussion which follows. Rather than investigating in depth
a single community in the conventional anthropological manner, this paper
broadly reflects on the wide range of active historical meanings which
these homes represent to Hungarians today. Such consideration is
conducted in three stages. Firstly, some of the general issues of postwar
residential construction in Hungary are noted with reference to the
relevant literature on housing under state socialism. Secondly, the
historical development of villa architecture in Hungary is reviewed by way
of its incipient and classical forms. Thirdly and finally, the discussion
enters the present day, examining current trends in villa construction by
way of location, design and decoration.
The ethnographic data upon which the current paper rests is part of a
much larger project of anthropological inquiry begun in Hungary in 1989
and primarily (but not exclusively) dealing with economic change in the
region in relation to international business (Czegledy 1995, 1996).
Focused fieldwork on new residential construction was conducted in
Budapest and its environs during two separate periods of research in
March and July of 1998. Participant-observation inquiry supported by both
structured and informal interviews, along with textual research, was used
throughout. Particular attention was paid to the new real estate and
housing magazines (e.g. Csaladi Haz [Family House], Szep Hazak
[Beautiful House], Ingatlan [Real Estate], Kepes Ingatlan Expressz
[Pictured Real Estate]) which have recently begun to appear on Hungarian
news stands. This inclusion was made after it became clear in the course
of interviews that the content of these magazines has begun to increasingly
influence the aesthetic mores of those Hungarians in a financial position to
pick and choose housing designs according to their personal tastes.
Housing in Socialist Hungary
Much of the physical surroundings to contemporary house
building in Hungary is directly influenced by the restrictions
imposed on real estate development during the state socialist
period. After World War II and the establishment of a Soviet-backed,
socialist government in 1949, considerable effort was made by the
authorities in Hungary to eliminate the housing inequalities inherited from
the past of Habsburg rule and its successor Horthy regime. The
establishment of tight housing controls regarding the use of residential
space and the effective nationalization of the large houses of the
bourgeoisie and upper classes set the framework for subdividing mid-level
and luxury accommodation after the Soviet fashion. With the installation
Villas of Wealth 247
of administrative curbs on real estate ownership, "the state became the
dominant force in urban housing, owning most of the housing stock
indirectly through the new structure of the local authorities" (Kovacs
1990:112). This situation remained in place until legislation was passed in
July of 1993. In addition to plans for the mass construction of apartment
high-rise buildings, these early policies were intended to ease the urban
housing shortage of the time. Simultaneously, they were meant to
accommodate rural migrants from the countryside and, thereby, encourage
the development of an industrial proletariat of the kind envisioned by the
socialist forefathers.
Commonly located at the edges of towns and cities, the new Hungarian
housing estates were intended to physically reflect the collectivist
ideology of state socialism, whether it be in terms of their construction,
design or in the provision of specific on-site services. While none of them
matched the example set by Moisei Ginzburg's Narkomfin Communal
House in Moscow, many were designed with ideological precepts as well
as practical considerations in mind. The largest of the housing estates
grouped tens of apartment high-rises together, frequently organizing them
around a children's nursery, primary school, grocery store and--more
often than not--a miivelodesi haz (cultural centre) where state-sponsored
social and political organizations could base their activities. In the 1960s,
eleven construction enterprises were established to provide creditsubsidized
housing on a huge scale of production (Locsmandi & Sillince
1990:452). These "apartment building factories" churned out a limited
number of large-scale designs whose minutiae were strictly regulated
according to administrative fiat. The extent of this regulation was such that
even the directional orientation of the apartments were at one time
codified according to their categorical size (Preisich 1997:77). The
apartments themselves tended to be cramped, poorly heated and
inadequately ventilated. They often shared washing, kitchen, as well as
toilet facilities, and the most common complaint of their inhabitants was
the lack of acoustic insulation and its effect on privacy. As we shall see,
this issue of privacy remains a central dimension of villa architecture as
expressed through the convention of surrounding gardens.
State-assisted housing never succeeded in satisfying the voracious
demand for urban accommodation which existed among all sections of the
population. Public demand was partially offset by residential construction
via private means, either through (i) state-recognized housing cooperatives
or (ii) independent construction. The former entailed small
associations of families building one-off, low-rise apartment buildings
solely for their members. The latter type consisted of detached houses
built by, as well as for, an extended family. Relations and close friends
would frequently be called on to supply labor and expertise on a reciprocal
basis known as kalaka (see Sik 1988), although skilled work generally
necessitated the use of hired labor (Fehervary 1997:140). Because of the
state sector's near monopoly on both raw and semi-finished building
248 City & Society
materials, this form of construction often required a measure of
articulation with the black market (see Kenedi 1981). Such articulation
fitted neatly into the propensity of state construction workers and other
technical tradesmen to engage in "moonlighting" and, in the process,
frequently using materials and tools stolen from their official places of
work.
Only in the case of the socialist elite were detached, single family
homes able to be constructed without significant resort to familial labor or
the black market in building materials. Quite often, such construction was
accomplished through the (mis)use of company resources at the direction
of state enterprise directors who were, in effect, building personal homes
at public expense--or trading favors with senior politicians and
bureaucrats doing the same. The first time I came face to face with this
little-discussed dimension to socialist life occurred in 1992. During a car
journey with a workshop foreman of one of the socialist state's industrial
conglomerates we arrived at a major intersection in the Budapest suburbs.
He turned his head slightly, pointed out of the car window at some semidetached
housing, and said with a mixed degree of pride: "Look [Andre],
we built that: those nice condominiums over there were a gift of the
[senior] executives of the company to themselves. Too bad the workers
never got one!" It turned out that his workshop team had been but one of
several workplace crews assigned by the company hierarchy to build these
residential premises during the early 1980s. Such a case highlights one of
the crucial differences between many of the elite homes of the time and
those of the common citizenry: the personal cost of construction i.e. who
paid the bills. Moreover, to this point can be added Gyori & Matern's
(1997:102) recent observation regarding the connection between
membership of the elite and the ability to use one's status as a way of
establishingprivate real-estate ownership under state socialism (versus the
normative entitlement to much more limited, usufruct rights in terms of
the rental of state-owned properties).
Notwithstanding the social status of their occupants, the houses of the
socialist elite tended to be relatively modest, two story affairs. They were
simple in overall design and without much decorative pretension, often
utilizing heavily diluted elements of traditional architecture such as
painted exterior plasterwork and simple pitched roofs. These conservative
features permitted a measure of anonymity and ensured that the owners
could not be accused of following "decadent" bourgeois tastes:
It is true that some carefully designed detached family houses
were actually built in Buda during the sixties, but the builders
were very careful to avoid, in their own interest, giving the
impression, as slight as it may be, that the house in question
could be a villa. [Gabor 1997:62]
Perhaps it is not a complete surprise then, that rarely did any of the
houses of the elite borrow much in the way of decorative elements from
Villas of Wealth 249
contemporary modernist architecture. Even the Social Realist style which
originated in the USSR--while ideologically acceptable--tended to be
reserved for prominent civic and commercial (rather than residential)
buildings in Hungary. In spite of anti-segregationist policies promulgated
during the state socialist period, the elite of Hungary continued to locate
themselves in many of the same areas of the capital where their
predecessors of the first half of the century had chosen to live. Their
houses tended to be built in Districts II and XII of Budapest, both areas of
the capital situated on the Buda side of the river--the bank which remains
popularly associated with residential exclusivity (regardless of its housing
variation). A large proportion of these elite homes were constructed either
on the promitory suburb of Rozsadomb (Rosehill) or at its foot in adjacent
Pasaret, a hilly neighborhood known for its tree-lined streets and
substantial villa homes dating back to the last century. By the 1960s,
Rosehill in particular became the favorite area for such new development,
much of it unregulated (Preisich 1998:81) and under the protected sway of
political patronage. The area's association with the socialist elite became
so strong that by the end of the 1970s the mention of "a villa on Rosehill"
was the colloquial equivalent of referring to someone's political
connections to the ruling regime as well as their supposed wealth.
In spite of official efforts to the contrary, by the end of nearly four
decades of state socialism Kovacs could still write that: "... since the late
1970s, housing inequalities have continually increased, and there is a
heightened public awareness of a clash with perceived fundamental tenets
of the socialist system" (1990:110). For this and other reasons, early
studies of the housing market in Hungary tended to steer well clear of
focusing attention on the homes of the wealthy and powerful. Indeed, until
recently, such research was considered intellectually inappropriate for
ideological reasons--primarily because large-scale inequalities of personal
wealth were not supposed to exist within the bounds of socialist equality.
As a consequence, while a generation of Hungarian sociologists lead by
Ivan Szelenyi and Gyorgy Konrad's (Szelenyi 1978, 1982) pioneering
research launched substantive critiques on the general provision of
accommodation--none of them highlighted residences in the luxury
category. The discussion which follows aims to redress this imbalance by
focusing on the development of villa architecture in Budapest.
250 City & Society
Urban Mansions and Summer Residences
The Hungarian term villa is derived from the Italian word for a
country house, essentially a large rural residence for wealthy town
dwellers which came into special prominence in the Renaissance
period. Unlike the pastoral villas of Italy, however, the Hungarian variant
and its central European counterparts are nearly exclusively found in
urban settings and possess a bourgeois affiliation which is consonant with
the development of "new" wealth in the industrial era. They are essentially
"two storey, detached houses surrounded by gardens of varying
dimensions" (Gabor 1997:5). The Hungarian variety possesses an
indigenous character which is intrinsically tied to its origin in a
combination of two separate but related architectural forms: urban
mansions and summer residences built in Budapest primarily during the
nineteenth century. The first urban mansions of Hungary were relatively
small, but palatially appointed, residences. They were built in the still
separate towns of Buda and Pest mainly during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. With important exceptions in and around the Castle
Hill area of Buda, these mansions tended to be located on the Pest bank of
the river. They acted as a winter complement to the rural seats of the
aristocracy who spent the agricultural and hunting seasons on their
ancestral lands in the countryside. While not as large as the country seats,
these mansions were spacious enough to afford their titled occupants
sufficient room for privacy in an age where a sense of personal space was
still an exclusive privilege enjoyed by few urban dwellers. The mansions
incorporated private quarters for the family and public entertainment
salons of various kinds, as well as adjoining living quarters for the
household servants. In terms of their architecture, they favored the neoclassical
and baroque styles then popular among the conservative, upper
classes (Lukacs 1989:38).
The first summer residences in Hungary were built in the early
decades of the nineteenth century by the important commercial families of
Pest who, unlike the aristocracy, did not possess country estates to which
they might retire during the hot summer months. These wealthy, upper
middle class families sought locations in close proximity to their
commercial interests in the capital--yet removed from the crowded life of
the inner city. Many of them began to build summer retreats in select
places amidst the Buda hills, particularly the areas of Svabhegy, Zugliget
and Szepjuhaszne. Parceled out by the city authorities in the 1930s and
early '40s, the largest of these Buda plots measured nearly 8.5 hectares in
size (Gabor 1997:5). Comparatively, their buildings were of moderate
proportions and tended to be constructed of wood rather than more durable
materials. Many of them were styled in either the Swiss or Austrian
manner of two-story chalets, although several important examples used
neo-classical elements within the framework of a single story design.9
Just
Villas of Wealth 251
as the early summer residences were being built in the Buda hills during
the 1930s, other upper middle class families began to construct similar
retreats on the other side of the river just outside of Pest's growing urban
sprawl. In point of fact, the Pest bank of the Danube was much the
preferred location for summer residences in and around Budapest at the
time. It was only at the turn of the century that this preference would
change (by which time a Europe-wide phylloxera epidemic had devastated
the Buda vineyards and created a surfeit of room for residential plots).
During much of the nineteenth century the only direct access across
the Danube was a temporary pontoon bridge and, later, the permanent
Lanchid (Chain Bridge). Such limited access across the river ensured that
the most favored residential locations of the day were all in Pest, either
along the stretch of undeveloped land between Pest's Terezvaros (Theresa
Town) and the new Varosliget (City Park) located outside of the city
proper, or the lands immediately surrounding the City Park itself. These
Pest plots were both smaller and less spread out than their Buda cousins;
they were spatially restricted to an average of 4,300 square metres and
often placed directly adjacent to one another. This close spacing
maximized the revenues which the city authorities derived from the sale of
undeveloped land while increasing their ability to effectively manage the
development of the burgeoning Pest suburbs. Such growth was fueled by
new residential demands incurred as a result of both increased migration
from the countryside and changing middle-class prospects and
expectations with respect to the acquisition of housing.
During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries, all but the
wealthiest of middle-class families had but two choices in terms of urban
accommodation in the capital city. Many of them lived in the cramped
apartment blocks which were to be found in the central core of Pest, what
is now essentially District V of present-day Budapest. Others lived in
small, detached houses away from the built-up areas of the city, in what
are now Districts VI, VII, VIII and IX. In the latter cases, these suburban
homes were mostly single-story structures without substantive
architectural design or exterior decoration. New rooms would be added in
a makeshift manner as the family grew in number and/or wealth. While
possessing neither the splendor of the urban mansions of the aristocracy
nor the idyllic isolation of traditional summer residences, these permanent
homes established an important foothold in the public imagination,
opening the door to speculation in the investment of private wealth. In
doing so, they formed the final impetus for villa architecture in its
classical form in Hungary.
252 City & Society
The Classical Villas of Andrassy Avenue
T
he first true villas in Hungary were built during the 1870s and '80s
in the general area of the summer residences between Theresa
Town and the City Park (described above). They were located
along, or in the direct vicinity of Budapest's new Avenue (Ut, now
Andrassy Ut), an imposing thoroughfare laid out in 1872 and modeled on
the Champs d'Elys6e in Paris. The city's new Kbzmunkatanacs (Council
of Public Works) initiated the development by parceling out thirty plots
on the Avenue itself and fifty plots in the area around its outer limit at the
City Park. The first four nouses to be constructed were built by the
Avenue Building Society with the explicit intention of providing a model
for later housing. Such a progressive sense of urban planning was rare at
the time and highlighted how Budapest was then considered a "world city"
in the sense of Hannerz's (1996:129) meaning (whereby there exist a few
internationally-renowned cities considered worthy of emulation). With the
exception of four larger parcels, all of the initial plots on the Avenue were
no more than 1400 square meters in area. Their consecutive spacing
foreshadowed the city's plans to develop an entire residential area of villa
housing, not only on the Avenue, but along its future transecting streets.
These two characteristics (of plot size and density) encouraged an
architectural compromise between the multi-story apartment blocks of the
inner city (especially those constructed in Pest after the Great Flood of
1838), and the single-story tradition of summer residences and middleclass
homes. The result of this compromise was that the villa houses of the
Avenue neighborhood kept to a fairly standard, two-story format which
remains in place today--irrespective of plot size.
Because of their modest area, the Avenue plots put increased emphasis
on the architectural relationship between a building and its attached
grounds. The former tended to dominate the latter--but never entirely
erased it, as in the case of the inner-city apartment buildings. The gardens
of the Avenue villas thereby exemplified the contemporary interest in
nature as a lived experience, a line of thought which drew directly from
the Sentimentalist thinking developed at the turn of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries (Gabor 1997:5--6). Even at their most ephemeral
(such as with the Edelsheim-Gyulai Villa ), these villa gardens
established a critical sense of household privacy, creating a "natural"
barrier between the private world of the family and the public world of the
neighbors and passing traffic. As an alternative to cither nature "in the
wild" or a separate area of ordered topiary in the formal (neo-Renaissancc)
manner, they confirmed the obligatory "green space" which contributes to
defining villa architecture today--especially in reference to the socialist
period when common recreational grounds denuded of substantive flora
became the norm.
Villas of Wealth 253
Similar to the urban mansions--but quite unlike the ordinary middleclass
homes which were still being built throughout the Budapest suburbs
--the villa houses along the Avenue were designed as cohesive wholes.
The architectural connection between villa garden and building was
structurally accomplished by way of an ornamental staircase set at the
front of the house at a ground-floor level which lay above the halfbasement
(a semi-subterranean space where the servants lived and
worked). The ground floor generally comprised an entrance hall along
with "public" rooms of various kinds where visitors would be greeted and
entertained. As in the case of the villa of Hermann Babocsay, these
function rooms might include a study (library), parlor, dining and smoking
room, as well as a section of the house reserved for its "winter garden"
(arboretum). Above these rooms, on the first floor, resided the family and
here were located the bedrooms for private use and the living rooms for
informal, collective activities. The villa houses were intended as yearround
homes for their occupants. Their construction reflected such
permanence: built on a load-bearing wooden frame, the walls used a highfire
brick in an exposed manner or were plastered over and painted in one
of several typical colors. The most popular of these colors was a spectrum
of orange-yellow which one might refer to as Habsburg Yellow (because
of its ubiquity throughout the Austro-Hungarian empire). The foundation
cladding of the houses often consisted of several courses of semi-finished
stone which offset the coloration above it. This stonework was employed
for the purposes of both structural support and decoration, becoming an
integral feature of many of the turn-of-the-century villas in Budapest,
particularly those designed in one of the so-called Eclectic styles of the
Arts & Crafts movement locally termed szecesszio (Secession).
Within fifteen years, the Avenue was filled up with villas on either
side of its wide boulevard. Some of them were built by the aristocracy as
well as the upper-middle classes. In the 1890s and the following decade,
most of these houses were renovated and extended just as new villas in
more modern styles were built throughout the adjoining streets. Because
the villa owners (leading bankers, traders, academics, etc.) tended to
possess certain cultural pretensions in keeping with their upwardly-mobile
position in society, many of them took considerable pains to hire some of
the country's foremost architects (Gustav Petschacher, Aladar Arkay,
Jozsef Vago) to design and/or renovate their homes. The resultant villa
negyed (villa quarter) was the first of its kind in the country. Both
prosperous and trend setting in equal measure, it could boast a prestige
which has lasted to this day. By the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, the Avenue villa quarter had became the (upscale) model for
similar developments elsewhere, both in Budapest and throughout the
country. One of the best known of these new villa areas, the so-called
Judges' and Public Prosecutors' District (1911-1913) was located across
the Danube on Kis-Svabhegy (Small Swabian Hill). The villas of this
development were quite modest in comparison to those of the Avenue yet
254 City & Society
managed to surpass their predecessors in terms of native inspiration.
Influenced by the sense of historical nostalgia prevalent at the time of their
construction, the villa houses utilized local folk motifs in their decoration
and, thereby, set important local precedents in the architectural valuation
of indigenous culture. Moreover, their siting signaled a veritable seachange
of residential demography by becoming "the starting point for a
general tendency seen throughout the twentieth century. Since that time
most villas have been built in Buda..." (Gabor 1997:24).
As the newer villas began to populate the slopes of the Buda hills in
the opening decades of the twentieth century, the villas of the old Avenue
area fell out of architectural fashion. Construction on such a grand scale
could not continue indefinitely and the economic downturn which
followed the end of the Great War put an abrupt stop to the building of
larger-scale residences throughout the country, especially those in Pest. By
reason of their running costs alone, many of the original Avenue area
villas soon became untenable for occupation. Even before the war, several
of the grandest villas had been demolished in the more conservative (neoVictorian)
spirit of the times. Some of them now went vacant for a time;
others gained new residents--including among them national academic
and charitable institutions (Gabor 1997:37-8). Today, the majority of the
remaining Avenue villas are not inhabited by wealthy families but by
foreign embassies, international-development organizations and a variety
of state institutions. This current domination of the original villa quarter
by prominent institutions rather than people (in the residential sense) is an
apt reflection of the combination of fluids and bureaucratic clout which is
currently required to acquire (and maintain) one of these exclusive
properties. While the country's economic elite is not yet in a position to
move (back) into this most prestigious of urban areas. They are, however,
quite free and willing to build elsewhere. Where and what sort of villas
they now build is the concern of the rest of this paper.
New Villas, Old Locales
Whether financially rooted in the service sector as Kovacs
(1997:121) suggests, or involved in the recent process of state
privatization since 1987 as much of my own research has paid
attention to:
The new rich stratum in Hungary does not seem to need the kind
of legitimization conferred by diplomas. It seeks in the classic
capitalist entrepreneurial fashion to exploit a niche wherever it
finds one; but in Hungarian conditions mis has tended to lead not
to productive investment, but rather to conspicuous consumption
and, above all, the consumption of housing. [Kovacs 1997:121]
Villas of Wealth 255
Although I do not entirely agree with Kovacs' assertion of a lack of
"productive investment," there is no question but that the "consumption of
housing" is at the forefront of the contemporary Hungarian imagination.
At the upper end of the now liberalized housing market, such activity is
heavily skewed towards the villa model of residential architecture in its
many modern variations. These new villas tend to be commissioned by
professional couples (with children) where neither parent is of less than
managerial rank and where at least one of them is the owner or general
manager of a thriving local or regional business.
As in the past, Budapest remains the hub of villa development--
although the construction and renovation of summer cottages along the
increasingly gentrified shores of Lake Balaton (lying some distance to the
west of the city) has provided an important alternative for those investing
in high-priced real estate. With scant exception (such as the upwardlymobile,
Pest suburb of Zuglo in District XIV), the new villas of the
wealthy are still built among the Buda hills of the capital city--although
such residences can be found in every major city in central eastern Europe.
The new Budapest villas are constructed within the wider framework of a
housing terrain wherein an increasing number of luxury residences can be
found as one leaves the flat areas of the river-bank and ventures higher up
the slopes of the Buda hills. This sort of hierarchical movement promotes
a sense of spatial differentiation between those who can afford to live
above the Danube's flood plain and those who cannot. Thus, in a way
which reminds us of the variety of secular ritual and symbolism (including
that of the state socialist type ) invoking the allegory between differing
social status and relative elevation, one's altitude of habitation in Budapest
generally confers a correlative prestige.
Land for urban expansion of the villa sort is secured by building on
unused or derelict lands and, occasionally, by way of subdividing larger
lots. Just as often it has progressed through the rapid colonization of the
officially "protected" green belt of park land which traditionally girds
Budapest on its western side. Exclusive hill areas such as Istenhegy,
Orbanhegy, Martonhegy, and Gellerthegy experienced such unfettered
residential development in the later decades of the socialist era. More
recently, it has been the turn of the Kiitvblgy area of District XII to fall
prey to this aggressive form of urban expansion. As a consequence of
pressures on residential land, even outlying areas of the city like the
Gazdagret neighborhood (mentioned at the beginning of this paper) are
being filled up in the rush to acquire land sufficient to accommodate
family homes of significant size. The average new villa plot on
Gazgadret's Quince street is approximately 2,000 square meters in size
and costs approximately ten million HUF (Hungarian forints)--although
some in the neighboring vicinity run to well over twice that respectively.
With the average Hungarian employee receiving an annual salary of
562,044 HUF.'7
In 1996, such plot prices are equal to nearly eighteen
years of wages--without taking into account social & health insurance (of
256 City & Society
forty-four percent deducted by the state at source in Hungary) and
personal income taxes depending upon income (see Frydman,
Rapaczynski, Earle et al 1993:102). After adding to these financial
considerations the actual building costs of a villa house (which might
range from fifty to two-hundred million HUFs), it is easy to understand
how substantial is the existing discrepancy between the Hungarian
residential ideal and its acquisition in terms of the general public.
Just as the price of prime real estate continues to escalate, the daily
reach of the metropolis has been extended by the only recent acceptance of
a commuting lifestyle for wealthier families in the country. This new trend
points to the fact that many of the newest villa sites of Budapest are
semantic contradictions in that they are not located in the city proper but
lie just beyond its south and northwestern peripheries. In former peasant
villages like Szentendre and Leanyfalu which snake their way north on the
Buda bank of the Danube, the social and working lives of the newly
arrived residents are completely focused on the capital city to their south
while their residential existence lies outside the city boundaries proper.
These residents have little social connection to their immediate residential
surroundings. In many cases, their extravagant villas sit next to a mixed
variety of summer cottages and humble peasant homes--no doubt
buildings which will soon be displaced by the erosive need to acquire the
large lots necessitated by the suburban villas. The large lots of the villa
compounds--like the impressive houses which they contain--arise from
specific circumstances. These circumstances can be linked to three major
issues: material display, privacy and personal health concerns. The most
explicit among them is that of the display of material wealth in the form of
luxury housing, a phenomenon which incorporates an unreined backlash to
the socialist ethic of austerity on the one hand, and fits directly into the
new cult of materialism which has inundated central eastern Europe, on
the other. From this perspective, the routine argument that the nouveaux
riches seek to advertise their social status through their homes is not
without substantive foundation. The further quest for urban privacy is one
of the most important motivating factors in the decision to build villas in
the first place and, in the second, to locate them in low-population density
areas. It is only in these areas where larger lots are available. The larger
the plot, the greater the sense of seclusion--irrespective of the neighbors'
activities. In this sense, the contemporary interest in creating a separate
space of familial activity mirrors that of the first Hungarian villa owners of
the nineteenth century. Like them, the owners of the new villas recognize
that the slopes of the Buda hills provide an added topographical feature
which increases the spatial separation between nearby structures and lends
itself to even greater privacy. Such separation not only affords the
inhabitants the aesthetic value of an unimpeded view of the city below but
it also increases the net worth of their residences in a way which is
consonant with Hungarian views biased towards residential property as the
primary form of familial investment.
Villas of Wealth 257
Emphasized by my own research data, a final motivation for locating
villas among the Buda hills is the new-found sense of ecological concern
(as related to health issues) felt among the affluent in Hungary." While
statistical evidence to suggest that the location of the new villas in
suburban areas of the city removed from the increasing pollution of the
inner core remains elusive, it is clear this sort of connection is not without
relevance. Every villa owner whom I spoke to replied with an answer
featuring the health of the family as a primary consideration. As one
young millionaire who made his money through the process of
"spontaneous privatization in Hungary put it to me:
If I can afford [to avoid] it, why should I have my family
live where it is more polluted? Here among the Buda hills
there are more trees, the air is clean, and I don't [have to]
worry so much about the family's health.
New Villas, New Styles
While prospective villa owners pay careful attention to where
their new homes are to be located, much more of their time is
focused on the physical structure and layout of the villa itself.
This is a matter of construction and design, on the one hand, and the
context of material supply and consumption, on the other. From whichever
perspective, historical precedents as well as recent innovations play their
part to produce a kaleidoscope of architectural elements. In terms of their
overall construction, the new villas of the wealthy hark back to the more
holistic approach of the prewar era. This is for two reasons. Firstly, their
owners possess the means to finance construction at a single stretch, a
condition which is a distinct rarity in comparison to the general picture of
house-builders in Hungary, sixty percent of whom have only ten percent
of the required funds at the start of construction according to a recent
study (Fehervary 1997:140 cf. Magyar Nemzet, 15 November 1996).
Secondly, the villa owners possess the sort of social networks which are
necessary to ensure that the inevitable bureaucratic barriers can be quickly
hurdled without serious detriment to the building works. Such combined
personal resources allow for a cohesive design of the premises as well as
its full execution. Unlike in Russia, where the draftsmen of construction
companies play a central part (Humphrey 1997:98), the design process in
Hungary is often led by one of the new generation of aspiring architects
who received their practical training in a state architectural practice but
have since turned to the private market as a means of viable income.
Because most of the new villa owners are businessmen and women
who have learned to delegate authority in the climb to the top of the
258 City & Society
commercial world, their involvement with the process of construction is
frequently limited to consultation over the chief design elements of the
house. Many of the minor design touches--including the villa grounds '--
are left to an architect, with the owner(s) then signing off on the final
plans. This is a striking difference to the case of other home owners in
Hungary, the majority of whom continue to put a great deal of their own
labor into the construction of the familial home. The major point of
convergence between the two disparate groups is, if anything, their mutual
distrust of the workmen involved. This distrust is both a matter of personal
control over the project as a whole and an acknowledgment of the
convention of workplace theft which mushroomed under state socialism.
Building-site theft is a dimension of the construction industry which feeds
into wider social relations in Hungary on the part of villa owners. It is
frequently countered through the owner(s) asking a poorer relation to act
as a building supervisor of sorts, thus expanding the notion of traditional
kalaka relations by including a non-manual (service) function. Rarely is
cash money given to the relative in direct reciprocity--although offers of a
paid vacation abroad are not unknown. Generally, it is simply understood
that as the largest house to be found within the extended family, the villa
will become, de facto, the focal point for larger assemblies of relations.
This responsibility is not a light one in the sense that its logic of generosity
may include a heavy addendum: care for infirm senior relations who may
be housed in a separate "apartment" built into the general plan of the villa.
Such apartments are popular in Hungary among both the wealthy and less
wealthy alike, principally because they can be utilized to accommodate
both paying and non-paying tenants.
While there is no specific "villa style" of architecture in Hungary
today, many contemporary villas do follow certain patterns of general
design as well as sharing a number of decorative features. In terms of their
general design, variations on a box structure are prevalent because of the
ease of construction. More angular, asymmetrical and/or curvilinear
designs are, however, popular among the less conservative clientele--a
group whose tastes are clearly influenced by the examples of
"international" residences featured in the new housing and interior
decoration magazines. The most popular styles of villas appear to be either
loose interpretations of earlier neo-classical and baroque villas or diluted
modernist versions which owe as much to the recent neo-Italianite style of
Euro-American institutional architecture as to the preceding Bauhaus. In
the latter cases, this co-existence of modern decorative elements (and
materials) with traditional forms reminds one of the reach of international
artistic design and, particularly, the way in which globalization has
produced a "deterritorialization of cultures" (King 1990:399).
The major indigenous contribution to current villa residences in
Hungary is that of the Hungarian school of "organic architecture" led by
Imre Makovecz. Its influence is felt in terms of both materials and their
employment. On the one hand, there is the abundant use of wood as an
Villas of Wealth 259
integral construction material in a way which is quite unlike the Russian
counterparts noted by Humphrey (1997:94). On the other hand, there
appears the fluid half-moon shapes of upper-story windows and the thick,
draped roofing which frequently envelopes the topmost story of a
structure. The latter feature (which is also found in a lighter Russian
version) seems to originate from the traditional look of thatched huts built
by the peasantry in Hungary. This sort of mansard roofing repudiates both
the pitched-roof design characteristic of simple, middle-class homes and
the flat roof designs of modernist and Social Realist architecture.
Especially in the case of exaggerated examples, its elongated nature plays
a hidden role in providing an extra story of habitation by neatly
sidestepping local building-code restrictions on where a roof must begin
(but not end).
As far as exterior decoration is concerned, the new villa residences
utilize traditional and modern features in a dizzy mix of architectural
vocabulary. Yet, whatever the mixture of their features, even the most
modern of them tends to echo the established archetropes of local villa
architecture. The compounds are generally fronted on the main (street)
side by an ornamental gate through which one enters the villa grounds
proper. Many versions of this gate incorporate architectural details such as
a miniature roof and eaves imitating the substantiality of the traditional
gate-house of aristocratic palaces. Running at ground level around the
residence can usually be seen either a foundation course in stone cladding
(as in the case of the turn-of-the-century villas)--or a wide band of paint
(different from the building's main coloration) which visually imitates the
very same feature. Both gate and banding act as architectural solidifiers,
anchoring the building within a recognized tradition of easily interpreted,
cultural vocabulary. The main door of a villa residence is often framed by
one, two or four sleek columns which mimic the neo-classical porticos of
the grand civic buildings of Pest and add a deliberate sense of permanence
to the new structures. These columns are rarely couched in a pure,
classical manner (i.e. Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc.). Instead, pared-down,
modernist interpretations seem to be preferred (and replicated in other
external features such as balconies, lintels, etc.). As a consequence, the
columns most often appear as simple pillars sheathed in painted
plasterwork.
Another intrinsic element of the new villas is the addition of an
automobile garage. Such garages are the practical successors to the coachhouses
of former times, similarly harboring prestigious vehicles which are
the envy of the general populace. As elsewhere throughout the former
Socialist Bloc, the Russian-made Volgas have now been replaced with
other foreign makes of automobile, particularly those of German design
(BMW, Mercedes, and Audi). The arrival of these new cars has been
paralleled by an explosive combination of social developments throughout
central and eastern Europe. These developments include: the rise of
conspicuous consumption, an increasing disparity between rich and poor,
260 City & Society
the growth of organized crime and a poorly-funded police constabulary. In
at least some combination, they have led to a significant increase in crimes
related to property, particularly burglary and automobile theft. As a
consequence of the threat of crime, the overwhelming majority of the villa
garages are covered and/or of the "off-road" type (where the parking space
is safely integrated within the interior of the villa compound). Some of
the newest villas even have burglar alarms installed, a radical notion for a
country where the oppressive nature of a totalitarian system possessed the
silver lining of high levels of personal and property safety.
Whatever the main architectural features of the new villas, the
residences themselves tend to uphold the traditional color schemes of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings: a range of smooth pastels
along with the ubiquitous Habsburg Yellow. The continued use of this
"culturally resonant" (see Czegledy 1995:46-50) color in a country which
has uncritically aped Euro-American fashions of late is not, however, a
question of retrograde personal taste reproduced time and again. More
than any other feature of contemporary Hungarian architecture, it is
emblematic of the current vogue for Austro-Hungarian nostalgia--itself an
offshoot of post-socialist, patriotic sentiments which have found a new
lease on life in public display of all manner. In spite of their impressive
outward appearance, most of the new villa houses share with their less
well-off neighbors substantive structural defects related to either (i)
shoddy workmanship and/or (ii) the local market in building materials--
although Humphrey's (1997:86) research in Russia might add willful
sabotage on the part of workmen as an additional dimension. The first of
these factors is the combined outcome of a long-standing tradition of
contractors skimping on building materials (as a way of increasing their
profit per project) in addition to the postwar deterioration of craftsmanship
values in the construction trades. As might be expected, this deterioration
is directly related to former state production policies and their emphasis on
the volume of industrial output (rather than its quality).
The second factor in low quality construction in Hungary (and
elsewhere in the region) is a simple result of the inadequate supply of
building materials. The plaster and paint on the exterior of a residence
often covers over second quality materials, in particular a generic type of
pale red, clay brick which is substantially larger than prewar examples but
also of lower quality. The cavitied nature of this brick is meant to give it
insulating properties. This advantage is, however, outweighed by a
combination of variable composition and relatively low-temperature
firing, both qualities which leave it prone to cracking during manufacture,
transit and erection. Such cracking ensures problems with respect to
structural durability and makes the brick ill suited for decorative purposes
(in the manner in which the material was sometimes used in prewar
residences). The lack of quality building materials in Hungary (and the
region as a whole) is in major part a direct legacy of the socialist period
when the authorities organized the construction industry around monopoly
Villas of Wealth 261
enterprises offering an extremely limited product range. The successor
companies to these enterprises have not substantially changed the quality
of their self-produced wares--so even the most opulent of villas in
Budapest, Prague, etc. tend to share some of the problems of their less
well-off neighbors. Only in the last half decade have higher quality
building materials become available (again)--but their exorbitant cost as
(often imported) items has largely restricted their local use to decoration
rather than substantive structural incorporation.
New Villas, New Capitalism
Just as the new villas of the wealthy exhibit the riches of the
economic elite, so too do the social uses to which these residences
may be put reflect the post-socialist world of commercial priorities.
Such an emphasis veers away from objectifying the villa as a simple
construct of material culture in the vein of consumer-oriented studies and,
instead, turns to viewing it as a social device of enabling power coterminus
with organizing structures significant to post-socialist society. In
these terms, it is necessary to briefly consider the internal layout of the
new villas as well as taking into account their attached space at the ground
floor level.
The general floor-plan of contemporary villas in Budapest focuses on
the classical two-story model established in the nineteenth century,
although garret and basement sections of a house may extend the space of
the residence by a substantial margin. The ground floor is given over to
common function rooms (kitchen, dining room, lounge/living room) while
the story above is usually divided into specific bedrooms for the family.
Only toilets and bathrooms (which are traditionally kept apart from one
another) may be duplicated throughout the various levels of the structure.
Such an arrangement follows the traditional separation of the
private/familial part of the residence from its public level(s) of communal
activity and hospitality. While it is rare for this internal layout of the villa
house to be readily apparent to the casual visitor looking in from the street
outside, such is not the case after entry. One's entrance is usually made
through a small, but well-appointed, foyer which is situated close to the
lounge containing sofas and chairs set around one or more, low-slung
coffee tables. Quite frequently, an impressive antique (carved wood) end
cabinet or secretaire serves as the centerpiece of an interior wall which is
situated opposite to an over-sized picture window looking out onto the
terrace patio and the villa grounds.
In terms of a showcase role, the lounge is an interior space of
considerable technological and decorative focus. It is here where a top-ofthe-line
home entertainment system takes pride of place just as in many
262 City & Society
of the well-to-do houses of western Europe. The entertainment system is a
technological device which not only transforms the modern home into
self-contained leisure site (pace Tomlinson 1990:60-61), but also exists as
a separate status symbol of consumerist achievement. Through it, the
household projects its self image of spending power on a par with the
successful expatriate families whom they may visit during vacations
abroad or, perhaps, even the wealthy households profiled and portrayed on
international television programs. Like its cousin appliances in the
kitchen, the entertainment system is a technologically sophisticated object
of spending which parallels the air of calm, professional efficiency
considered emblematic of the new Western style of entrepreneurial
capitalism. To it is attached an inverted snobbery wherein foreignproduced
appliances (and even interior design fixtures) confirm a muchvalued
air of materialist cosmopolitanism. In this way, the economic elite
of Hungary may be said to have (re)joined the world of consumer
cosmopolitans--a fraternity of image-oriented, elitist culture where rare
and expensive items (of a monetary value far above the level of
McDonald's hamburgers and Levi's jeans) are chiefly known only by
those few who can afford them. As one villa owner noted to me: "Nothing
second-rate. I want only the best that money can buy. Everything will be
prima (top quality), as good as the furnishings in any house you [might]
see in Vienna..."
Not surprisingly, it is also in the lounge where one finds ethnicallysymbolic,
folk artifacts and/or more sophisticated objets d'art. The latter
include paintings by Hungarian artists and--just as frequently--one or
more pieces of highly prized, local porcelain (usually from either the
Herend or Zsolnay factories). Each of these clearly recognizable "cultural"
objects resolutely proclaims the family's indigenous credentials while
presenting a terse reminder of haute social authenticity to visitors. In the
context of current Hungarian fashions at least, their presence contributes
to what appears to be a conceptual division between manufactured,
technical objects and the result of artistic, aesthetic expression. This
division emphasizes a dichotomy between preferences for technological
products in the guise of international commodities, on the one hand, and
preferences tied to a distinctly local character, on the other. Both of these
prejudices lends itself to a given image of the family open to artful
manipulation. Thus, the household can be interpreted--or interpret itself
--as either energetically "modern" or respectfully "traditional," depending
upon the given context.
In spite of the way in which the lounge acts as a stage for interior
decoration conveying specific cultural messages, it is in terms of its more
general architectural dimensions that it plays its most significant role in
the design of the new villas. In this case, the issue of dimension is really a
question of size, for the lounge tends to be the largest room in the house in
terms of both floor space and cubic volume. Its lateral dimensions are
often intensified through vertical incorporation into a faux atrium plan
Villas of Wealth 263
(which may then be given a theatrical flourish by way of a protruding,
interior balcony connecting the upper-story bedrooms). The size of the
space is a direct function of its critical role in accommodating various
social gatherings of relatives, friends, business associates and related
acquaintances. As one young Hungarian millionaire put it to me: "I made
sure that the lounge would not only be a comfortable place for [my child]
and her friends, but also that it would be big enough to fit a large group of
people inside, even if it rained." His statement is double-sided in that on
the one hand it refers to the size of a lounge being sufficient to
accommodate large group of people and, on the other, the prospect of its
doing so when the external twin (an adjacent terrace patio) is unavailable
for use due to inclement weather. This requires some explanation. While
the diverse architectural lineage of the contemporary lounge might be
traced to the parlors and smoking rooms of earlier villas, the terrace patios
of today are, in effect, architectural substitutes for the grander promenades
once incorporated into the rear of aristocratic palaces. In spite of this
historic difference, both lounge and terrace patio are spaces designed to
fulfill the same ulterior function (which may be considered separate from
any sort of internal, family usage): They are intended to act as the site of
group activities, particularly evening drinks, parties or receptions held on
the occasion of Name's Days and other life-event anniversaries. During
the summer months, weekend luncheons also figure prominently in the
scheme of social organization. Among some Budapest families at least,
there seems to be a recent vogue for the use of imported barbecue grills in
the North American tradition of preparing meats, especially beef.
It is at such ostensibly benign social gatherings where the villa owners
play host to other businessmen/women, politicians and civil servants--all
the time developing further the sort of multi-purpose networks which have
been integral to putting them in a position to build the villa in the first
place. These personal networks of the elite have developed out of a
combination of entrenched and engineered social relationships drawn from
a range of personal and institutional circumstances and backgrounds.
Under state socialism, they were the vital factor in leaping over the
hurdles of bureaucratic procedure and economic inefficiency. In today's
chaotic capitalism of half-established (and half only effective) compliance
and governance structures, they provide the surest path to solving the daily
problems of the post-socialist world. While drinking wine and snacking on
goose-liver pate, the villa hosts not only reinforce a complex web of crosscutting
relationships but also take the time to introduce their children to
the guests who, one day, will form the most senior element of the personal
networks for the next generation. Such mixing of private and public
domains in a cross-generational fashion is very much a hallmark of the
way in which the new economic elite of Hungary and the other postsocialist
nations of central and eastern Europe operate today. In substantial
part, this sort of dense "network capitalism" is a direct legacy of state
socialist society and its emphasis on power related to status and social
264 City & Society
influence rather than that connected to monetary and other forms of
material wealth. One of the major post-socialist differences is, however,
that engendered by changing social attitudes towards the acquisition of
such material wealth, its display and the renewed acceptance of
conspicuous consumption. These "new" perspectives have provided an
open door for the new economic elite to continue the villa tradition of
architecture with renewed intent. Such intent is both a matter of desire and
one of necessity, for whereas state socialism provided a variety of
accessible institutions and structured forums for the congregation of the
elite, the new capitalism has no such basis. Gone are the Party, Young
Communist League, powerful unions, etc.; gone are the celebratory events
of the Socialist calendar. While the capitalist replacements of a nascent
Chamber of Commerce and other venues attempt to find their feet in
society, it is the new villas which have come to prominence in a switch of
setting from the public institution of the Cultural House to the lounges and
terrace patios of private residences in the Buda hills.
Conclusions
I
n conclusion, the modern villa in Hungary is not simply a
comfortable home for the aspiring (or already successful) family in
the sense of conventional usage. Its mix of classical and innovative
architectural vocabularies, its use of foreign materials and appliances,
even the featured ethnic decoration, all combine to form a potent symbolic
statement equally understood by its authors, inhabitants and those who
might visit them. Its calculated, social spaces further provide the necessary
environment for the maintenance of personal networks critical to
managing the vicissitudes of post-socialist life. As the major material
symbol reflecting its owner's status, the villa reassures the guest with
messages of permanence rooted in the historical specificity of distinct
locations and conventional architectural forms. At the same time, its
modern features and sophisticated appliances claim an international
pedigree and cosmopolitanism which repudiate much of the local context
in the sense of King's observations on architecture and modernity. He
reminds us that this is a world where the differences to be found within
given societies may be greater than the differences between them, and
where "architects and designers move more easily between them, and New
York, London and Bombay than between Bombay and the villages of
Maharashtra" (1990:449).
Yet in Hungary this message is never so clear as to be completely
uniform, for as structures of display the new villas simultaneously
proclaim an important dimension of ethnic pride through their indigenous
motifs and the showcasing of artistic products possessed of a very real
Villas of Wealth 265
local identity. While such latter display (especially) might be but a
disingenuous metaphor for the rooted "honesty" of a villa's owners, it
simultaneously reinforces the value of indigenous, cultural production in
an escalating spiral of aesthetic exclusivity. It is this very idea of
exclusivity which seems to separate Hungary's economic elite from the
reach of other sections of the population. In reality, such exclusivity is not
the product of some hard and fast set of prestige objects but the result of a
far more nebulous curtain of social possibilities turned into probabilities. It
is not the material possessions of the new economic elite which
continually consolidate their position in society but, rather, the
overlapping webs of relationships put to constant utilitarian use on a level
far above that of the common man and woman. In such terms, the new
villas of the wealthy are both the products of wealth and its creators. They
have become an ideal architectural launching pad for the reproduction of
the new sort of assured, network-based capitalism which is now the
dominant form of socio-commercial endeavor throughout Hungary and its
post-socialist neighbors.
Notes
' For which see Connnor (1979:278).
2
See Gyori & Matem (1997:101-104).
For elaboration on housing estate sites in Hungary refer to Preisich (1997:67-
120).
4
Built in 1928-9. See Buchli (1998).
Many of these developments were located on the edges of the city in the Buda
hills, where land plots were made available at favorable prices by the local councils.
Connor (1979:254) notes that this variety of housing in the context of socialist
regimes played a greater role outside of the Soviet Union than within it.
Only recently have Szelenyi and Konrad's insights come under stronger
scrutiny, this from the direction of Kovacs (1990), who has reasserted the general
premise of an equality of access to state housing--at least under early state
socialism.
The three historic towns of Buda, Pest and Obuda were unified in 1873.
The Kochmeister Villa (1852), built by Frigyes Feszl at what is now Budakeszi
lit 71, is a leading example of the Swiss chalet style of summer residence.
The Villa Rozsa (1847), likely built by Jozsef Hild at what is now Budakeszi lit
36/B, is a leading example of the neoclassical style of summer residence.
10
Completed inl 848.
Ga"bor considers the middle-class house the direct "predecessor" (1997:12) of
villa architecture in Hungary.
The Council was established in 1870.
266 City & Society
Situated at Andrassy ut 132, this villa was designed by Adolf Gnauth of
Stuttgart and took its name from the second owner.
Designed by Aladar Arkay, this villa at D6zsa Gyorgy lit 92/B (on the corner
of Andrassy ut), was built in 1904-5.
The propaganda machine under socialist regimes made frequent use of the
symbolic dimensions of height, especially in the use of architectural decoration (see
Lane 1981:199-200).
Preisich (1998:181) reminds us that the expansion of Budapest into the Buda
hills over the last twenty years and the consequent eradication of the city's protective
green belt has altered the immediate area's micro-climate with as yet unknown
environmental consequences.
This figure is based on a monthly salary (before tax) of 46,837 HUF according
to the 1996 Statistical Yearbook of Hungary (1997:2/1).i o
Fehervary suggests that these views originate in the status of the house under
state socialism as the symbol of the family par excellence, as well as in its role as a
primary medium of autonomy from the state (1997:138).
19
This concern is understandable in the framework of a connection between the
youthful age of a significant proportion of the new economic elite in Hungary, their
often privileged schooling, and current concerns about health (influenced in part by
Euro-American trends). Szirmai has pointed out that "Studies in the 1980s showed
that those with higher qualifications, younger age and living in urban areas are more
sensitive to environmental issues" (1997:32).
20
Refer to Frydman, et al (1993:132-133).
This is chiefly due to the lack of a landscape design profession in
contemporary Hungary--a direct result of official prejudices against non-functional
design during state socialism.
The latter group includes teenage children desirous of social autonomy and
married children who have trouble finding suitable accommodation within the tight
urban housing market.
Humphrey makes the same point for Russian villas (1997:93).
Sidewalk parking is a distinct feature of suburban Budapest and sharply
contrasts with the inner city where motorists generally park their cars directly on the
sidewalks (due to planning precedents which did not take into account the explosion
in vehicular traffic beginning in the 1970s).
This is a critical reason why painted plaster remains the dominant exterioi
surface for residential buildings in central eastern Europe.
Even the spatial division of guest rooms confirms this separation in that a
special bedroom reserved for visiting relatives will often be located on the uppei
story while a similar bedroom for other guests can be found somewhere below it or
the ground floor.
A combination of television, video cassette recorder, radio and music
player(s).
Villas of Wealth 267
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