The renovated Walter Rózsi villa on Bajza Street was handed over on Tuesday, MTI reported. With the renovation of the villa, the capital was enriched with another cultural location in the vicinity of Városliget, as the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and the Documentation Center for the Protection of Monuments received a new exhibition space in the villa. According to the plans, using the buildings of the neighbouring former city park sanatoriums and then the BM Central Hospital, an architectural museum complex called the Architecture Park will be built here, for the design of which a design tender was announced last year, but no realistic plan arrived.

The renovated Walter Rózsi Villa was opened with an exhibition inspired by the building, called Színárd (Photo: MTI / Szilárd Koszticsák)

The villa was designed in 1936 by the outstanding figure of Hungarian modernist architecture, opera singer József Walter Rózsi, and her husband and child. The architect's wife, Eszter Pécsi, the first Hungarian static engineer, was responsible for the design of the villa, which was built in less than six months. A characteristic modernist feature of the three-storey building is that while the street façade is closed, the façade overlooking the garden is more open. On the ground floor, next to the garage, a janitor's apartment and service rooms were created. On the first floor there is a living room, a reception room and a dining room, while on the second floor there is a bedroom, a children's room and a bathroom. A roof terrace has been set up on top of the flat-roofed building.

One of the special features of the building is the stairs leading to the garden, which can be accessed from the first floor. After World War II, a new hospital of the Ministry of the Interior was established from the neighboring sanatoriums, named after Otto Corvin. The villa was nationalized in 1949 to function first as a kindergarten and then as a hospital pediatrician's office. During this time, the former modernist villa was rebuilt several times, and the already mentioned garden staircase was demolished. The hospital moved out of the buildings in 2009, including the villa, which has deteriorated considerably.

As reported by MTI, the restoration of Walter Rózsi Villa began in 2020. The villa, which was handed over on 29 March, was opened with an exhibition called Scene and Living Space, which showcases the theme of home and housing between the two world wars.

Source: MTI

Cover photo: Garden facade of the renovated Walter Rózsi villa (Photo: MTI / Szilárd Koszticsák)