Havas Villa (Budapest), interior design for the living room (inv. no. KRTF/546.)

Commissioned and first owned by Ernő Havas, a building contractor, this flat-roofed, three-storey, single-family villa was built in 1932 after Lajos Kozma’s design. The severity of its rectangular volume is strikingly lessened by the uppermost storey, which is recessed from the eastern and southern fronts; the ground-floor terrace and the stairs that lead down into the garden and protrude from the plane of the wall; and a terrace that cuts deeply into the eastern volume of the basement. The same eventfulness is also enhanced, if to a lesser degree, by projections and recesses in the floor plan of the ground floor, with a conservatory whose walls are offset from the plane of the main wall, and a small terrace outside the maid’s entrance. The decorative elements of the façade are also in accord with the playfulness of the volume. They include the cornice that caps the building; a mixture of vertically and horizontally oriented openings, and their sills; the canopy of the entrance; and the exposed brickwork of the basement walls, which the slope of the plot causes to shrink to become the base of the wall on the north front.
In Kozma’s designs, the ground floor is dominated by the intercommunicating lounge and dining room, as well as a windowless room that opens onto the covered terrace. The staircase that connects the upper storeys and the basement is in the north-eastern part of the house, as are the kitchen, the maid’s entrance and room, and the service room, which are separated from the living rooms. The three bedrooms and the two bathrooms, complete with walk-in wardrobes, were placed on the first floor. Since the slope of the plot made it impossible to connect the ground floor living room directly to the garden, the covered terrace already mentioned was introduced, accessible from the room and having stairs that lead down to the back of the garden. The owner’s study was in the basement, and its door opened directly onto the garden. The family could also connect to nature by means of the roof terrace that is accessible from the upstairs bedroom.
Kozma commissioned photographer Zoltán Seidner to document his buildings once they were finished. In the photos that were probably made after the villa was handed over, all its fixed spaces can be seen furnished with modern furniture of Kozma’s own design, while the owner’s personal possessions, which may have brought to mind earlier periods, do not appear in these images. The documentation held at the Museum of Applied Arts includes an architectural drawing of one of the upstairs bathrooms as it came to be built, employing the bright palette that marked the entire villa. The yellow, red, blue and black details were reflected in the expansive glass surfaces. Contemporary publications revealed that the flooring in the two upper storeys was linoleum, rather than parquet.