Hungarian Design Council, Budapest [Magyar Formatervezési Tanács]

The Council for Industrial Art [Ipari Formatervezési Tanács]—now the Hungarian Design Council—was founded in 1954/55. It was subordinated to the Ministry of Light Industry, but its chairman was the Minister of Culture. The aim of the Council was to set artistic standards for mass-produced goods and guidelines for improving product quality, to recommend products for export and import, to organise design competitions, to establish contacts with foreign countries, and to monitor design education.
In 1980, the Council awarded its first Industrial Design Prize to honour outstanding work by designers and design collectives. The awarded projects were presented in the imposing exhibition hall of the Design Centre in Budapest, another important institution in the field. From 1982 to 1990, the laureates received a plaque. The first catalogue presenting the winners was published in 1983, and the prize is still awarded annually.
The Office of the Industrial Design Council [Ipari Formatervezési Tanács Irodája] was established in 1975 as a unit of the National Technical Development Committee. Acting as an interdepartmental mediator, it addressed only the economic aspects of design, but also its theoretical ones, including methodology, ergonomics, and education. It also coordinated the Hungarian Design Award (launched in 1979) and the László Moholy-Nagy Design Scholarship (launched in 1988). Following several restructurings, it was transferred to the Hungarian Patent Office in 2002 and then the Hungarian Design Council in 2023. The archive and the papers of its seminal leader, József Hegedüs (1932–2020), are now preserved at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest.
Eszter Szőnyeg-Szegvári