The Kistelegdi Collection

Dr. István Kistelegdi, Ybl-prize winner architect and emeritus professor at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, donated his photo collection about his life work to the Local History Collection of Csorba Győző Library in 2012. He took more than 5000 photos as the designer of BARANYATERV (between 1972 and 1988) and later the designer of PÉCSITERV. The collection partly covers the state constructions of Pécs and Baranya, Somogy and Tolna counties since the 1970s until the change of regime.

Prof. Dr. habil. István Kistelegdi

Kistelegdi István modellfotói - Dr. Kistelegdi István, CC0

He was born in Szombathely on 7 December 1944. He studied at the Péchy Mihály Building Industrial Vocational School in Debrecen. He took his architect and monument protecting engineer degrees at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 1968 and 1981. Between 1968 and 1972, he was the leading designer of BARANYATERV, and between 1972 and 1988 he was the architect designer and workshop leader of PÉCSITERV. He worked as an academic teacher at the Pollack Mihály Technical College, later the Pollack Mihály Engineering Faculty of the University of Pécs. Later he became a habilitated senior lecturer and nowadays a professor emeritus of the university. He undertook roles in several professional organisations: he is a member of the Association of Hungarian Architects, the Hungarian Society for Urban Planning, the Educational Committee of the Chamber of Hungarian Architects and the Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Pécs. István Kistelegdi is a founder of the Youth Office of Pécs that played an important role in the development of the Hungarian organic architecture, and also of the Pécs Group that is connected to the organisation closely. His research focused on the application possibilities of folk architecture traditions, monument protection, reconstruction of historical parts of towns, allocation of new buildings in historical environment and the relations between environmental culture and tertiary architectural education.

His work

Siklósi ravatalozó - Dr. Kistelegdi István, CC0

It is difficult to select among his works, but the most important ones are:
Siklós: Funeral home (1972)
Komló: Theatre and Concert Hall, Music School (1974-82)
Paks: housing estate of the nuclear power plant (1973-76)
Pécs: reconstruction of the historical city centre (1978-1988), the ‘Elephant’ block (1980-1988), FÉSZEK Department Store (1983), Artisan House (1987), FEMA shopping centre (1991), Merchants’ House (1992), auditory and aula of the University of Pécs Faculty of Law, Zsolnay Museum (2004), Swallow House (2005), Boszorkány Road College of the University of Pécs Pollack Mihály Engineering Faculty (2005-2008), Modern Hungarian Art Gallery (2008-10).

His honours

Mr. Kistelegdi received Ministerial honours several times: for the reconstruction plan of the historical city centre of Pécs in 1981, for the building of the Theatre and Concert Hall in Komló in 1982. He also received a Janus Pannonius prize for the former one in 1986. He received an Ybl Miklós prize as well for the same and for the design of the House of Arts in 1988. In 1992, he won the Pro Architectura award for the FEMA shopping centre that was a unique commercial and service centre in Hungary back then.

PÉCSITERV

Pécsi Tervező Vállalat új számítóközpontja - Dr. Kistelegdi István, CC0

From 1950 until the change of regime, Pécsiterv was an important designer company of the Southern Transdanubian region. The national-range architecture workshop was formed under the name Designer Office of Pécs in 1950. It became Designer Company of Pécs in 1958 and Southern Transdanubian Designer Company in 1979. It operated mainly in Baranya, Somogy and Tolna counties, with profiles like designing housing estates and residential houses, planning communal – primarily food-industrial – buildings and city-planning. Significant achievements were reached in the field of monument protection as well: the reconstruction of the city centre of Pécs, research and restoration of the folk monuments in the region.

The intellectual diversity of its creative team is shown by the fact that the company undertook a pioneer role in developing city-planning basic principles of housing estates and in the standard designs of big blocks of flats since the beginning of the 1960s. Meanwhile, it provided the emerging organic architecture, which criticised the above mentioned practices by the Pécs Group (Youth Office operating between 1972 – 1977), with a framework.

Local History Collection of Csorba Győző Library

Baranya Megyei Könyvtár külső és belső fotói - Dr. Kistelegdi István, CC0

The legal predecessor Baranya County Library started to collect local history material at the beginning of the 1960s. By the ‘70s a high-quality local historical activity was going on in the library. The local history information provision started in 1978. The book collection consists of about 20 thousand volumes, including the heritage of Mihály Kelemen (physician of Pécs) and of Odó Szikrai (sheriff of Pécsvárad) as well, about 4000 books published between the 17th and 19th centuries or even earlier. The library undertook the creation of a new database as of the spring of 2011, which is called Baranyai DigiTár. The main goal of the development is to make the intellectual values (present and future) of Baranya county accessible for everybody on the website of the library. Architect Dr. István Kistelegdi donated his photo collection to the Local History Collection of Csorba Győző Library in 2012. The library digitised the archive photos and fitted them with metadata within the frames of the National Digitisation Public Employment Program coordinated by the Hungarian National Digital Archive (MaNDA). After this, MaNDA – as the national aggregator – forwarded them to the European Digital Library, Europeana.

The conversion of the Kistelegdi Collection is still under process. According to plans, it will be available in searchable format on the website of the Local History Collection of Csorba Győző Library. Until that, it can be researched physically on the first floor of the Southern Transdanubian Regional Library and Knowledge Centre.

Source literature (in Hungarian language):

Déldunántúli Tervező Vállalat: Pécsiterv / szerk. Panyik István, Budapest, Kossuth Nyomda, 1985.
Pécsiterv 1971, Pécs, Pécsi Tervező Vállalat, 1971.
Pécs Lexikon / főszerk. Romváry Ferenc, Pécs, Pécs Lexikon Kulturális Nonprofit Kft., 2010.
Pécsi Tervező Vállalat / szerk. Rojkó Ervin, Gyöngyösi István, Tillai Ernő, Erdélyi Gábor, Pécs, Pécsi Tervező Vállalat, 1968.
Pécsi Tervező Vállalat 1950-1975 / főszerk. Mischl Róbert, Pécs, Pécsi Tervező Vállalat, 1975.

Etele Szüts
Translated by Zita Aknai

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