Hungarian Wood Festival

The first Hungarian Wood Festival started on August 24, with four teams composed of young and creative students designing and making complex installations or sculptures that can be folded or disassembled, made of a kilometer of wood planks.

Students from three universities (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and University of West Hungary Institute of Applied Arts) formed four groups to work for a week under the supervision of a group leader each on structures exciting from the point of view of both architecture and art. All the pieces were in some way related to the environment of the host location, Csongrad Art Camp, which provided both accommodation and plenty of inspiration.

The week-long creative student workshop’s theme was using wood in a versatile and creative way, and the infinite form variations of installations and sculptures created under specific conditions.

Peter Pozsar’s group, sawing the 1000 m of planks into shorter and longer pieces, built a nest into the shroud of one of the younger trees. From there, snaking around its immediate environment, they continued with the structure to form a quadrilateral cave, as an allegory of the two housing archetypes. They chose an exciting way of securing the structures: instead of nails, they used strings running through drilled holes to hold together the planks.

Andris Huszar’s less spontaneous, but more virtuoso group created a 3m egg-shaped structure, which will work as a tumble-up after being loaded it with sandbags: it will return to its original position, no matter how animated the swing is.

Not surprisingly, the most risky experiments were conducted by group leader, architect and inventor Aron Losonczi: his group left the planks their original size to create a multistorey-high structure stretching far up towards the sky. Their other installation was a grid capable of bridging large distances – its strength was even tested on location.

One can say, however, that the most popular piece of the festival was the 17 meter dinosaur, made by Gabor Miklós Szoke’s group. The peaceful herbivore was made based on a smaller model in only three days, by spontaneously screwing together planks of various sizes.

The Wood Festival was organized by MOME line - design works and Ujirany Architects.