Nóra GEIGER
Many Happy Returns to our beloved Professor!

Dr. Mihály MŐCSÉNYI professor celebrated his 90th birthday on the 9th of November this year. On this occasion several events and publications (4D magazine, the book MM XC and many events at Corvinus University) dedicated themselves for the celebration. He was a special guest at the award winning ceremony of the Media Architect Award; he was also celebrated by members of the profession at the gala conference organised by MTA and the banquette held at MTESZ. Landscape architects and other member of the trade showed their appreciation and respect by conducting a daylong event pack full of interesting programmes.

It was plain to see from the shown short films and from the publications, that he is just as important as one of the giants of the profession as he is beloved and respected in private life. His life achievement is an example for everybody to follow. He started his carrier, achieved extensive knowledge and took major part in the professional education in a trade which development was heavily obstructed. He studied at different institutions parallel in order to achieve, and then pass on a fuller, more valuable and complex knowledge to his students. It is surprising how many companies (Lakóterv, Főkert, Váti) he worked at the same time he thought at the university. He explains this parallelism with financial pressure and also with his desire to achieve such complex, practical, real life experience of being and architect that would be useful for the would-be professionals. This, he says, was the only way to prepare them for real life and to know what they are expected to do in an architect office.

For my questions how he was able to live such active working life and where he got this relentless energy he gave me a long, detailed answer. First of all he felt an urge to always do something, never to stop and to be constantly moving. “Every day we need to prepare ourselves to spend the next one useful” For this we need a certain mental and physical freshness, we need to keep exercising our body and mind every day. “We need to keep harmony and not to pay too much attention to what other people or our surroundings say or think.” We must always act up to our own norms and sense of values. He admits that for an active life one might need good inheritance and good gens but he always felt lucky in that respect as a member of his franc family.

According to him one of the main problem of our time is that more and more people move to big cities and at the same time the part of our society, that lives out of farming, out of our ”mother earth” is disappearing. People move to town where they get dependent. They, he says, will slowly realise the harm of the “killer towns” and will move back to the country, seeking out the healthier, more environmental ways of living. Today, the lines of industry that are mechanised became very profitable. Hence man became an unwanted surplus. “We need to rethink and reorganise our production and give opportunities, a chance to man again”. We should move back to the country to live with nature and animals in harmony. We must farm but not only for living but for the pleasure of it. We need to get to a level where our environment, the land that surrounds us will serve our leisure and safeguard our health. Soon there will be times when we only need to spent a few hours daily to create values for our community but we will have more time to enjoy our landscape and everything it can give. We need to transform the land that was taken out of production into such space where we can relax, recreate and spend our time pleasantly. This is the mission of landscape architects today.

The other important role of landscape architects today is to draw attention. Some 60% of our population who used to farm lessened to a worrying percentage of 5% by today. People did not need landscape architecture in the past and unfortunately the consciousness or importance of this kind of work hasn’t developed yet. We need to make people understand to be demanding and ambitious not only about their clothes but their gardens, parks as well. The role of the landscape architects are vital to emphasize this even if it means to take projects up that are unpaid, to work for the cause and not for profit.

With these thoughts I would like to conclude my writing and say a very big thank you to our beloved professor for the tremendous work he has done that helped us be better people and landscape architects. We wish him a long, healthy life, more success in his work. Many happy returns to him!