Personal Biography
I was born to an intellectual family after WW2 in Budapest, Hungary.
The neighbourhood of the Buda Castle and the surrounding Viziváros at the Danube determined my formative years.
I draw a lot. My father's art books of Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini, the amazing colours of Dürer's saints and flying angels, the terrible skeletons with naked maidens of Hans Baldung gave me great pleasure and made me shiver.
His books on astronomy excited me, the immense effort to understand infinity caused me terrible suffering.
In primary school I won several competitions in mathematics.
Both my friend Andrea and my father's Indian friends had doll's houses built in a chest of drawers. We played terrific role-playing games all the time.
My girlfriend Márti Vida gave me one-man performances of history dramas.
I played also a lot with paper dress-up dolls with Gizi Kiss and Edina Erdélyi and wanted to be a fashion designer.
My family disapproved to this idea - they wished some more serious career for me.
My father often played the piano and listened to opera performances on the radio at home while conducting.
Weber's Der Freischütz frightened me.
In high school my art professor Pál Nyerges found me talented and gave me an easel and made my mother buy me paint and brushes and turpentine. I painted in the bathroom. At dawn before school I went down to the Danube to draw, on the weekends up to Szentendre with my friends.
In high school, I again won competitions in mathematics: I loved the problem-solving and decided to be an atomic physicist.
I read a lot: the great works of Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky; but the French contemporary existentialists: Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir had the biggest impact on me.
The literary magazines like Nagyvilág, Kortárs and Valóság helped me to feel the spirit of the time.
We spent the summer holidays at the lake Balaton in Tihany, sometimes in the mountains of Mátra and Bükk.
On the roof-terrace of our house, above the city, in the silence with only the cooing of the turtle-doves I had adventurous journeys with the help of literature.
I liked to be alone.
Our house in Budapest was designed by a famous modernist architect and the coherence, originality and logic of every detail of his work delighted me enormously.
During the last high school summer holiday I spent one month in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the invitation of my father's business partner. The many modernist church buildings I saw in the mountain villages amazed me.
I chose architecture.
In the final year of high school I fell in love with Laci R and we stayed together for the next 5 years.
We travelled a lot, made long journeys during the summer holidays in France and Italy.
Visiting the artist colony of Madame Károlyi in Vence, France, was a great experience: the suggestive larger than life-size doll in her exhibition space inspired me to create sculptured textile pieces.
At university I became increasingly enthusiastic about architecture.
In fifth grade I was awarded Best Student of Architecture for my design of a guest house in the centre of the Buda Castle.
At the same time I was member of the alternative cultural life and the flux movement. I took part in theater performances and designed the scenery for them.
Having got my diploma I started working at the state-run design firm Iparterv in the studio of the architect Zoltán Gulyás.
I won competitions and got my own projects soon.
I was admitted to the Hungarian Master School of Architecture and got elected as the representative of the students.
During this period I married Béla R K and we went to England to our honeymoon.
My kids were born. I had to divide my attention, I needed a change.
I accepted an offer to work on interior architecture projects.
My first interior project was the design of the Cinema Kossuth in a listed building.
The design based on strict principles with black glass walls, intense colours and neon lightings became a success, was much published and brought me a lot of commissions later.
The following years were intensive, with one project after another, exhibitions, publications, more success.
I was short-listed for the Ybl prize* three times, I should have won it but didn't.
Due to being a woman, or because of making interiors, or because of a rival.
In 1989, after the political changes in the country I created my own company Fraktál Art after having worked for years as a freelancer and member of the Association of Hungarian Artists.
Between two projects and during the long summer holidays while my children were small
I continued to create sculptured textile pieces.
I enjoyed the animation of the dead substance.
In 1998 I set up my computerised office and started working on computer.
At the end of the nineties the market started narrowing, orders hobbling, foreign rivals appeared.
In 2005 after my two sons started their university studies in the USA, I moved to England with my second husband.
In London I started working in one of the best practices in the UK as a design architect and had my own successful projects.
I gained all my projects by winning the office competitions.
When with the recession my projects were put on hold I continued creating large scale sculptural textile art again
in my London and New York based studio.
* the most important prize for architects in Hungary
Professional Profile
Detailed CV
I was born to an intellectual family after WW2 in Budapest, Hungary.
The neighbourhood of the Buda Castle and the surrounding Viziváros at the Danube determined my formative years.
I draw a lot. My father's art books of Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini, the amazing colours of Dürer's saints and flying angels, the terrible skeletons with naked maidens of Hans Baldung gave me great pleasure and made me shiver.
His books on astronomy excited me, the immense effort to understand infinity caused me terrible suffering.
In primary school I won several competitions in mathematics.
Both my friend Andrea and my father's Indian friends had doll's houses built in a chest of drawers. We played terrific role-playing games all the time.
My girlfriend Márti Vida gave me one-man performances of history dramas.
I played also a lot with paper dress-up dolls with Gizi Kiss and Edina Erdélyi and wanted to be a fashion designer.
My family disapproved to this idea - they wished some more serious career for me.
My father often played the piano and listened to opera performances on the radio at home while conducting.
Weber's Der Freischütz frightened me.
In high school my art professor Pál Nyerges found me talented and gave me an easel and made my mother buy me paint and brushes and turpentine. I painted in the bathroom. At dawn before school I went down to the Danube to draw, on the weekends up to Szentendre with my friends.
In high school, I again won competitions in mathematics: I loved the problem-solving and decided to be an atomic physicist.
I read a lot: the great works of Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky; but the French contemporary existentialists: Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir had the biggest impact on me.
The literary magazines like Nagyvilág, Kortárs and Valóság helped me to feel the spirit of the time.
We spent the summer holidays at the lake Balaton in Tihany, sometimes in the mountains of Mátra and Bükk.
On the roof-terrace of our house, above the city, in the silence with only the cooing of the turtle-doves I had adventurous journeys with the help of literature.
I liked to be alone.
Our house in Budapest was designed by a famous modernist architect and the coherence, originality and logic of every detail of his work delighted me enormously.
During the last high school summer holiday I spent one month in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the invitation of my father's business partner. The many modernist church buildings I saw in the mountain villages amazed me.
I chose architecture.
In the final year of high school I fell in love with Laci R and we stayed together for the next 5 years.
We travelled a lot, made long journeys during the summer holidays in France and Italy.
Visiting the artist colony of Madame Károlyi in Vence, France, was a great experience: the suggestive larger than life-size doll in her exhibition space inspired me to create sculptured textile pieces.
At university I became increasingly enthusiastic about architecture.
In fifth grade I was awarded Best Student of Architecture for my design of a guest house in the centre of the Buda Castle.
At the same time I was member of the alternative cultural life and the flux movement. I took part in theater performances and designed the scenery for them.
Having got my diploma I started working at the state-run design firm Iparterv in the studio of the architect Zoltán Gulyás.
I won competitions and got my own projects soon.
I was admitted to the Hungarian Master School of Architecture and got elected as the representative of the students.
During this period I married Béla R K and we went to England to our honeymoon.
My kids were born. I had to divide my attention, I needed a change.
I accepted an offer to work on interior architecture projects.
My first interior project was the design of the Cinema Kossuth in a listed building.
The design based on strict principles with black glass walls, intense colours and neon lightings became a success, was much published and brought me a lot of commissions later.
The following years were intensive, with one project after another, exhibitions, publications, more success.
I was short-listed for the Ybl prize* three times, I should have won it but didn't.
Due to being a woman, or because of making interiors, or because of a rival.
In 1989, after the political changes in the country I created my own company Fraktál Art after having worked for years as a freelancer and member of the Association of Hungarian Artists.
Between two projects and during the long summer holidays while my children were small
I continued to create sculptured textile pieces.
I enjoyed the animation of the dead substance.
In 1998 I set up my computerised office and started working on computer.
At the end of the nineties the market started narrowing, orders hobbling, foreign rivals appeared.
In 2005 after my two sons started their university studies in the USA, I moved to England with my second husband.
In London I started working in one of the best practices in the UK as a design architect and had my own successful projects.
I gained all my projects by winning the office competitions.
When with the recession my projects were put on hold I continued creating large scale sculptural textile art again
in my London and New York based studio.
* the most important prize for architects in Hungary
Professional Profile
Detailed CV