The whole is made up of the parts | The buildings and photographs of László György Sáros
László György Sáros is both an outstanding architect and a renowned photographer. He has been involved in photography since childhood, and for a long time he was unable – and indeed unwilling – to choose between a career in photography and one in architecture. Ultimately, he chose architecture as his profession, but photography has become an important part of his body of work.
He is one of the leading figures in Hungarian organic architecture. During his university years, he sought out Imre Makovecz and, together with his friend János Gerle, became one of the first students at Makovecz’s private masterclass. This encounter developed into a master-pupil relationship and a deep friendship that shaped his entire career and life’s journey. In his architecture, he developed a unique formal language—distinct even within the Hungarian school of organic architecture—that incorporates organic and geometric motifs, postmodern details and functionalist elements alike. For him, organic architecture is not manifested in the primary use of natural forms or materials, but rather in an approach that places human life – and with it, time – at the centre of architectural thinking. It is about creating the possibility for people to live a fulfilling life within the spaces he creates, over the course of time – even spanning generations. Whether dealing with public or service buildings, family homes or urban-scale interventions, it is this human scale that defines his architecture, in which playfulness often plays a role alongside the use of high-quality materials and the precise elaboration of structural details.
Schedule
Sáros regards photography as an integral part of architectural practice. As he puts it, an architect must not only see, but also make others see, for ‘of all that we know about architecture, we have seen, and continue to see, only a small fraction in real life. As for the rest – that’s what the photographs are for.” He boldly exercises his right to a subjective perspective, using it not to present the one and only truth, but to offer others a relatable human interpretation, a complex experience. The subject of his photography is primarily the built environment, or the relationship between man-made space and nature: highlighting parallels, contrasts and the relationship between the part and the whole. His ‘CanyoNewyork’ series, created during his travels in America, draws on visual analogies between the monumental rock formations and plains of the American canyon landscape (Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico) and the architecture of the New York metropolis, highlighting the structural connections that can open up philosophical horizons in the interpretation of these paired images. He compiled his ‘Pocket Belgium’ photo series from photographs taken over several decades at a farmstead in Heusden, Belgium, in which he reveals the whole through a focus on detail. The *Pókország* series was also created from a selection of photographs taken there, in which he narrows his focus down to the microcosm of spiders to reveal the marvellous system of proportions and architecture they create.
Alongside his work as an architect and photographer, László György Sáros regularly publishes his lyrical writings and essays in various publications. His buildings, photographs and texts are all different manifestations of a thinking and creative person’s desire to communicate and ‘to make things visible’.
Júlia Szerdahelyi, curator of the exhibition
Kunsthalle Budapest
The largest exhibition hall in Budapest, in Heroes Square, just the opposite the Museum of Fine Arts.
