Church, Fejérd

Among the Romanian churches designed by Károly Kós, the church at Feiurdeni is a true outlier. Located some 15 kilometers north of Cluj, beyond a large hill, this isolated settlement lies hidden in a valley and is inhabited by a mixed, though predominantly Romanian, population. Upon reaching the edge of the surrounding hills, this small Kalotaszeg-like world suddenly opens up and expands, and from the basin rises before us an enormous cathedral-like mass.

Here we encounter Kós Károly’s hidden Istanbul world—his message. Only later, when one is already standing at the threshold, does one realize that one’s head nearly reaches the top of the gateway that had seemed so monumental from afar. Yet Kós did, in fact, succeed in building his competition design for the Orthodox cathedral planned for Cluj in 1921—just not there, and not on that scale.

This is the only work that directly evokes the two years the architect spent in Turkey, revealing what an Orthodox church in Transylvania might be, according to Kós Károly. Its architectural structure shows affinities with certain types of Orthodox wooden churches. It has only a single tower. In its massing and geometry, however, it recalls rather the Hagia Sophia—originally a Byzantine church—and the Turkish Muslim architecture that later reinterpreted it.