Calvinist Community Hall and Shop, Magyarbikal

This simple design provides another example of the integration of separate functions within a rural setting, making use of the sloping site in order to accommodate a shop opening directly onto the street at basement level. Access to the lecture hall and the reading room on the upper floor is provided from the rear, via an external staircase and a covered porch. While the scale of the building immediately identifies its community function, the gabled roof set perpendicular to the street respects traditional rural patterns.

Kós prepared similar designs for the local Kalotaszeg villages of Körösfő (1936, built) and Köröstárkány (?). A particularly dominant feature of the 1942 design is the wall constructed entirely of rubble stone. A very similar “type design” for a cultural center was published by Kós in Falusi építészet (Rural Architecture).