Architect. Member of the Prize’s Board of Experts (2014)

An architect who also works in production design as well as being a human rights activist. He was part of the Hungarian vanguard movement and, in 1975, he joined the underground political movement, the Democratic Opposition, after which he was blacklisted and persecuted by the authorities in the 1980s. After the free elections of 1990 he was a member of parliament for the Alliance of Free Democrats – Hungarian Liberal Party. He is a member of the Szechenyi Academy for Letters and Arts, and was invested by France as Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite. From 2002 to 2015, he was a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

He studied Architecture at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the Carleton University of Ottawa, the McGill University of Montreal, and Columbia University, New York. Since 1976 he has been working as an architect and in production design for several projects and clients, including the film Son of Saul (by the director László Nemes), winner of an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Cannes Grand Prix, and other projects in which he has worked with John Irwin, Tony Gatlif, Ridley Scott, and Fatih Akin, among others. In the academic field, he is a lecturer at the Budapest University of Theatre and Film Arts and has taught in other prestigious centres, including Princeton University, Concordia University, Middlesex University, inter alia. He has written books and articles, among them, “(De)construction in (Post)socialist Europe: Continuous and Variable Use of Spaces and Method” (in Instant Cities, by Herbert Wright, Blackdog, 2008) and Stratified Architecture – Essays on Design and Architecture (Terc Publishing House, 2005).

Last update: April 2019