6.51.Hungary-6-Horizontal-with-Figure Highlights Relevant to Sustainable Design:
Cultural preservation has a time and place.
This is the last of the Hungary sketchbooks. My travels in Eastern Europe extended beyond Hungary and included Austria, Slovenia, Ukraine, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Croatia and Serbia round out the seven nations that border Hungary. One amazing aspect of the Hungarian people is their ability to absorb influences from their neighbors over one thousand years while still maintaining a continuity of their own culture.
In this sketchbook section, the statues drawn in silhouette are from the Soviet occupation. As the Iron Curtain fell, the Hungarian youth vented their frustration over their previously restricted rights by defacing many of the statues. The Hungarian government saw no need to disproportionally preserve the unfortunate chapter in Communist history. However, they set out to build a simple “Monument Park” outside of Budapest for all to view the statues of Communist leaders and remember the dark legacy of a half century. Cultural preservation is important in building any town or city, because people need to remember where they have come from, what they may have endured, and where they are going. This is done in the United States with monuments, but in Hungary, I noticed how these monuments became part of a whole park to secure the memory of occupation.
The cross to the right of the statue sketch is one of thousands of crosses that mark the town border in the rural communities. Sometimes the town had expanded beyond the border, while other times the cross sat quietly in the middle of a cornfield, waiting for the town to expand. I saw different style crosses each day while entering and leaving the towns. Each one served as a sublime reminder of the spiritual base and the individual identity associated with each town. I hope that people so rich in pride and spirit will continue to thrive. The right hand side is from Prague in the Czech Republic. This sketch is an inverted “sister” to the panorama of Budapest. The river view of Budapest was looking in from the Danube, while this one is looking out from inside the city center.
Author and illustrator: Charlie Szoradi is an architect, inventor, and the CEO of Independence LED Lighting. He writes about many other topics related to cultural memory like monument park in Budapest through his extensive travels around the world.
If you have found this posting online, it is an excerpt from Mr. Szoradi’s book Learn from Looking that served as the inspiring seed content for this drawing share resource. For additional drawings and insights on iconography such monument park in Budapest, we hope that you enjoy exploring LearnfromLooking.com. You can search via general terms such as sustainability as well as narrower terms such as Iron Curtain and monument park in Budapest.
