Ház, város, társadalom. Kísérlet a magyar CIAM-csoport „dokumentáris” kiállításainak rekonstrukciójára

The study deals with the exhibitions of the Hungarian group of the international organisation of modern architects, CIAM (Congrès Internationaux de l’ArchitectureModerne). this topic is not unknown to architectural his torians, with numerous publications from the late sixties to the early eighties, but actually, it was not known ex actly how many exhibitions the group had organised in the first half of the thirties to promote modern architec ture and to highlight the social problems it was trying to solve. At that time, similar exhibitions were held in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but unlike there where not only written but also a large number of pictorial sources are available, the same cannot be said of their Hungarian counterparts. Original photographs have only survived of the Collective House exhibition of 1931, while the material of the two ‘documentary’ exhibitions opened in 1932 is known only from a few published fragments and even fewer tableau fragments in public collections. Nonetheless, the reconstruction of the exhibitions is not hopeless: a great deal of information has been obtained from architects’ estates, CIAM correspondence, press coverage of the period, and the documents of the criminal trial following the third exhibition. It was possible to establish who were involved and what their role was in the organisation of each exhibition. It was possible to identify lesser-known actors, foreign parallels and models. thus, the story is also about the broader, national and international art connections, exhibition venues, the possibilities of the convincing visual communication of data and ideas, as well as criticism.