Budapest Design Week 2024, Szia!

Much as with the narrator of Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘I was a teenage armchair Honvéd fan’ we’ve also long “dreamt about a love affair in far-off Budapest”.

Unlike said narrator however our ongoing yearning doesn’t revolve around a football club in the Kispest district of the city whose black an red was once worn by the likes of Grosics Gyula, Kocsis Sándor, Bozsik József or Puskás Ferenc, but revolve around design.

Nor are we hankering after a golden age of either Hungarian football or Hungarian design, entertaining and informative as both unquestionably are, rather our focus is very much contemporary design in and from Hungary.

But perhaps the decisive difference between us and HMHB’s nostalgic narrator is that while he is content to sit passively in an armchair, we actively search for that design, we actively search for a differentiated interpretation, re-imagination, of an ‘armchair’, on the streets of Budapest.

Or did….. then came Covid and the Hungarian capital was as far removed as the years when Grosics, Kocsis, Bozsik, Puskás et al made Budapest a by-word for contemporary football.

2024 we’re back, have already been back. Several times. And are back once again for the annual Budapest Design Week……

Premiered in 2004 as an initiative of the Hungarian Design Council, MFT, as a week long event that was extended in 2008 to its current ten-days, without one notes changing its name to Budapest Design Decendium, Budapest Design Week 2024 is, if we’re correctly informed, the first edition to be formally organised by the in 2018 initiated Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency, HFDA. A switch of organiser that is instructive and indicative of the design landscape in the contemporary Hungary, as is the fact the Budapest Design Week website is a forlorn wasteland of error messages while information on Budapest Design Week is integrated into the HFDA’s website.

And an HFDA it’s fair to say, or certainly we feel it’s fair to say, that for all it understands itself as a universal platform for promoting and advocating design and clothing in Hungary, is one of the more divisive protagonists in design in contemporary Hungary. A status that, as with so much in contemporary Hungary, has a political element, a political context. Much as with the success of Honvéd Budapest in the 1950s. Which may or may not be a metaphor. But is well worth reflecting on.

What has remained the same over the decades is the mix of de-central events that compose Budapest Design Week. A mix very much continued in 2024 where amongst a wide range of workshops, talks, book launches and tours a central feature is the 5th edition of 360 Design, an event, a platform, featuring [predominately Hungarian] exhibitors in the sections Collectible Design, Brand/Product, Prototypes & Digital and Regional Designers. If a mix that, for our taste, and such questions are also subjective, features in 2024 too few presentations by independent designers; curated selections are one thing, designers opening their studios another.

While beyond the confines of Budapest the 2024 edition also features satellites in Sopron in the form of the 9th Sopron Design Week and in Pécs under the banner DesignPécs, which, yes, could bring us back to the golden age of Hungarian design. But certainly makes Budapest Design Week every bit a concentration of national talent under a Budapest banner as the 1950s Honvéd our sedentary football fan longs for.

In the coming days and weeks we will bring you some of our reflections on some of the works and projects and positions experienced at, and some of our reflections on, Budapest Design Week 2024.

For all in or near Budapest, or indeed in or near Pécs and Sopron, Budapest Design Week 2024 runs at various venues across all three locations until Sunday October 20th. Some events longer.

Full details can be found at https://budapestdesignweek.hu https://hfda.hu

Budapest Design Week 2024, Szia!

[Here will stand a listing of our posts from Budapest Design Week 2024, but first we need some…]