(b Budapest, 19 March 1903; d Budapest, 30 Nov 1973). Hungarian architect. He entered the Faculty of Architecture at Budapest Technical University in 1922. Following his graduation in 1931 he went abroad on a study trip, during which he spent nine months with Le Corbusier’s practice in Paris. On his return to Hungary in 1934 he became a member of the Hungarian affiliate of CIAM. His villa (1937–8; destr. 1944, see Máté, pp. 6–8) on Gellért Hill, Budapest, reflected Le Corbusier’s influence with its ribbon windows, terrace and raised façade. Ferihegy Airport (1939), Budapest, is in a more conservative style than his previous work. A simple functional building, it features symmetrically arranged control towers, which invest the façade with a particular individuality. In 1948 he became a state-employed architect and was subsequently commissioned to design the People’s Stadium (1950–53), Budapest, the largest Hungarian building project of the period. His first draft, developed in collaboration with István Janáky, suggests that he envisaged an undulating concrete foil of longitudinal sections of varied size connected by lower ‘saddles’. However, the stadium (incomplete in that the top grandstand was only half-built) was eventually built in a far more conservative fashion due to a change in official attitudes to art. For some of its more functional aspects, such as the view of the playing area and the ease of spectator circulation, the stadium can be considered a model of its kind. From the late 1950s Dávid was able to design anew in the spirit of Functionalism, and an example of this style is the secondary school on the upper bank of the Tisza, Szeged (1960). Most of his work from this period is concerned with buildings for cultural purposes and he also collaborated with sculptors, providing the architectural plans for their monuments, for example the Haydn Monument, Budapest (1960; with A. Kocsis, 1905–76).

• Dávid, Károly
  • Hungary, §II, 4(ii): Architecture, after 1914