Atrium, 2002 (8. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)

2002-08-01 / 4. szám

belsőépítészet e s i q n 054 If you haue seen the film The Talented Mr. Ripley, imagine the surroundings of the rich Rmerican boy liuing in nineteen-fifties bourgeois Italy. Euen if you are unfamiliar with the rich interiors of that film, you might haue an image of post-war Italy’s dolce uita: conseruatiue but high-quality furniture, encellent materials and new ideas in design. If euen this image is foreign to you, then I will relate to you the film I saw in Rndrássy út, with an Englishman’s room in the lead role. text by: Edit Blaumann / photos by: András Vikman or the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie Intro Simon tuas born thirty years ayo in the United Kingdom. He liued the first twenty years of his life in a typical English house. Garden front an back, hallway inside with doors right and left, small rooms, coloured wallpaper which Dad put up, patterned sofa, granny’s china in the sideboard, a random mishmash of this and that, a mixture of things accumulated ouer the generations. Childhood, adolescence and fog was followed by ten years of sunshine in Italy. He moued into an old house beside the canals in Milan. Dark, rustic wooden furniture. Old, but beautiful. High ceiling, white walls, pink curtains and cushion couers. He rapidly changed these to white and beige. His British properness became infused Italian softness and warmth. He worked a lot and learned a lot. H late 20th century Grand Tour. The now-Palladian Englishman then took up work in Budapest. His first residence was in a strip-window Bauhaus building in Petőfi Sándor utca. He got the flat unfurnished, and after getting a couple of pieces of furniture from the landlady, decided it would be better to find his own. His first acquisition was a Magister sofa by Naua and Citterio. Then he picked up some nice lamps. Here he spent three well-paid years in central Pest. Commissions here and there: a little Indian detour, then one to Romania, and after a brief struggle for hot water he returned to Budapest. Dlhy Budapest? Euery local is possessed with curiosity as to why a foreigner, who could be in London, New Vork or Paris, opts for here. The city where euerything is held up, where nerues are at shattering point. Simon puts it this way: Budapest may be a metropolis, but it is not enormous. The crowds on the street do not knock you ouer when you stop to giue your louer a kiss. Neuertheless, the market is open; there is money and demand in the country; but it is uery difficult for consumers to buy quality. In London and Milan, no matter how good you are, it is difficult to break into the market. So good work as an English tailor can comfortably get yoo a 120 m2 flat on Rndrássy út; only right of birth gets you one on Park fluenue. Hauing grown to like Budapest, Simon decided not to let work decide his life, but to take euents into his own hands. He decided to settle here, do a shop, buy a flat and furnish it so that he could Hue comfortably there. The historical building was built at the turn of the century to suit haute bourgeois tastes. R wide, ostentatious staircase and two flats on each floor. Some of the flats were partitioned in the time of darkness, but luckily his in a sensible way. Three interconnecting street-facing bound rooms a hall and a lounge and the bedroom are bordered by a corridor on the courtyard side. The corridor opens out to the kitchen and ends in the bathroom. Through the interconnecting rooms and the corridor, the full circle may be trauersed. Such a layout must be alien to an Englishman, but his Italian past explains the attraction. Rfter buying the flat, Simon spent months polishing his ideas for refurbishment. Then he returned to Italy to seek the opinion of a friend. This friend was Gauino Falchi, who’s own furniture collection has recently be presented. The most important thing Simon learned from him was harmony with the structure. So the guiding principle euen in Rndrássy út was to restore as much as possible to the original state, or replace it with a faithful copy. Rfter obtaining the original drawings, he reconstructed the position and form of euery door and window, and euen the profile and glass pattern of the door- and window-frames. These were then rebuilt and missing pieces fabricated. Simon had learned more in Italy than respect for old things. Continuity, a uirtue that Italian art has maintained for centuries, is also uital. Rn extreme example of this continuity is the EUR, a construction that, although considered ultramodern in its time, is peruaded by past ualues in euery detail. The suburban- Rome complex was built by Mussolini, but nonetheless retained by the post-war Italian system, and still functions as a ministerial A fürdőszoba a századelő hangulatál árasztja n turn o(-tlie-centurij mood reigns in the bathroom

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