Stefan Buzás was born in 1915 into a Jewish liberal family in Tapolca, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) and studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna before moving to England in 1938 in order to escape increasing Nazi persecution. He graduated from the prestigious Architectural Association in London in 1940, beginning his career as an architect with James Cubitt & Partners before establishing his own architectural firm with Alan Irvine in 1964, responsible for many elegant buildings in London. He was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists and was elected a Royal Designer for Industry in 1961.
Architect Stefan Buzás was born in 1915 into a liberal Jewish family living in Tapolca, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). His father, Desiderius Buzás, was a lawyer and committed socialist, and his mother Eugenie, née Lessner, came from a family of wine growers. His family moved to Vienna in 1919 after the overthrow of the temporary Hungarian socialist government, of which Buzás’ father was a part. Influenced by his uncle Mano Lessner, a modernist architect, Buzás studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule. However, in 1938 Buzás’ family encouraged him to move to London amid growing political unrest in Austria and increased anti-Semitic persecution. He did not see his parents again as they both perished in the Holocaust in 1944. Buzás was sponsored by a wealthy family in Hampstead in north London and lived briefly in Lawn Flats, Hampstead, a celebrated example of early modernist architecture. Buzás continued his education at the Architectural Association, gaining admission on the strength of his portfolio, taking holiday jobs as a draftsman while studying. Receiving his diploma and graduating in 1940, he was subsequently classed as an 'enemy alien' in 1941. and had to abide by a curfew. In 1942, Buzás married opera singer Joan Mills, with whom he had two daughters. He taught in the architecture department of Kingston School of Art (1944–49) where his students remembered him as an inspirational teacher.
In 1948 he became a naturalised British subject and, in 1949, he joined James Cubitt & Partners, a firm of architects who had all studied at the Architectural Association: Cubitt, Fello Atkinson, and Dick Maitland. With the firm, he designed the South African Tourist Office and Qantas Airways building, at numbers 70 and 69 Piccadilly, respectively. These buildings, with their elegant lines, created a new standard in London's architectural landscape. When Cubitt opened a branch of the firm in Accra, Ghana in the 1950s, Buzás temporarily relocated, working with Ghanian locals and Italian contractors to design residences and office buildings. In England Buzás's major interior project was Manchester's Ringway airport terminal building, opened in 1962, for which he commissioned four enormous chandeliers from Venetian glassmaker Paolo Venini, each weighing 2 tons, and made of 1300 pieces of blown crystal droplets. Other projects for Cubitt included Standard Bank offices and the Iceland Tourist Office in Piccadilly. Additionally, in 1951, he designed and built a pair of small houses on adjoining plots at Ham Common in Surrey, with one house for his family. Buzás designed a section of Ralph Tubb’s Dome of Discovery for the 1951 Festival of Britain, producing a beautiful set of more than a dozen designs in pastel, now in the drawings collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 1952 he designed the Weather Window for the Time Life building in Bond Street. In 1955, he took a year's sabbatical and worked as a visiting professor in the architecture department of the University of North Carolina. A great admirer of Italian design, Buzás befriended the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and wrote several essays on his work. The two also shared a passion for Sir John Soane's Museum, for which Buzas raised £40,000 of funds towards its restoration, and also wrote the guidebook.
In 1965 Buzás left Cubitt to establish his own architectural firm with his son-in-law, Alan Irvine, working on the interior of the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship, and producing a number of distinguished interiors, including RIBA’s Heinz Gallery. In 1965 he produced designs for the British Exhibition in Stockholm and in 1966 he worked with Irvine on the Standard Bank, Northumberland Avenue. In addition, the partners designed treasuries for several English cathedrals, including Salisbury, Chichester, Norwich, York, Lincoln, and Winchester. Buzás also designed a dolls' house for HRH Princess Anne. He described his architectural work as enjoying the chance to ‘solve functional problems.’ Buzás was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists and was elected a Royal Designer for Industry in 1961, an accolade only given to 100 people at any one time. In 1986 Buzás featured in the exhibition Eye for Industry held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the award's inception, along with fellow émigrés, textile designer, Margaret Leischner, and typographer, Hans Schmoller. Buzás retired from architecture in 1992 and, in 1999, he shared his life story with the British Library's oral testimony series, National Life Story Collection: Architects' Lives. in 1995 his work was included in the RIBA exhibition A Different World: Émigré Architects in Britain 1928-1958. Buzás died in London in 2008.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Stefan Buzás]
Publications related to [Stefan Buzás] in the Ben Uri Library