Lajos Kozma, born as Lajos Fuchs, showing more his Jewish origins, studied between 1902 and 1906 at the Budapest Technical University. So he was mostly influeced by the Art Nouveau period. In 1909 and 1910 he was a student of the painter Henri Matisse in Paris.
Besides architecture painting, illustration and interior design started to play a big role for Kozma. With those skills he founded the Budapest Workshop (Budapesti Műhely) in 1913 to reform architecture.
During the 1920s he designed shops and pharmacies, a good opportunity for training interier design.
In the 1930s he designed apartment houses and villas in Budapest. Especially in the villas he designed the house and the interieurs. But his Jewish origins marked a problem for the right-wing Hungarian politicians. In 1938 he was expelled from the Hungarian Chamber of Architects and was not able to work anymore.
With a falsified passport he survived World War II. In the new state he became an architect again, designed his first school and became professor at the Budapest University. But already in 1948 he died.
Sources
Buildings
Budapest, Hungary
Átrium