Dr. habil. Vilmos Katona, PhD, is a certified architect, author, and theoretical researcher of the built environment. He earned his degree in architecture from the Faculty of Architecture at Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2008, where he also completed his doctoral studies in 2015. His dissertation focused on contemporary church architecture and was later published as a book by Saint Stephen Society under the title “The Lord Enters His Sanctuary”: Contemporary Roman Catholic Church Architecture in the Light of Liturgy.
Dr. Katona's first monograph was dedicated to architectural history (Between and Beyond the Middle Ages: Architectural History Essays in Memory of Tamás Guzsik, Holnap Publishing, 2019), while his second explored advanced geometry in architecture (Symmetry in Architecture: Chapters from an Endless Story, TERC Publishing, 2021). Alongside these contributions, he has authored several hundred scholarly articles and art critiques in various peer-reviewed national and international journals.
From 2014, he served as editor-in-chief of the architectural magazine Metszet. In 2021, he was invited by physicist Gyuri Darvas to assume the role of editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary journal Symmetry: Culture and Science, where he has primarily overseen architectural-themed issues. Currently, he is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Architecture & Urbanism, published by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, and, since 2022, a guest editor of Springer’s Nexus Network Journal.
Following his doctoral degree, Dr. Katona began his academic career at the University of Sopron, while also teaching as a lecturer at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Széchenyi István University in Győr. He earned his habilitation in 2020, while serving as an associate professor at the University of Sopron, after which he joined the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Pécs from 2021 to 2023. At the end of 2021, he spent three months as a visiting researcher at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Inspired by Osmo Pekonen (JYU) and Nikos Salingaros of the University of Texas at San Antonio, his research shifted toward the intersection of architecture and mathematics, particularly the morphological analysis of the built environment.
Dr. Katona is a member of the Architectural Sciences Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Association of Hungarian Architects, the International Symmetry Association, and the UK-based Border Urbanism Research Centre. He has presented at scientific conferences from Rovaniemi to Seville, participated in and curated art exhibitions, and was awarded a grant from the Hungarian Academy of Arts' Arts Scholarship Program for the 2020–2023 cycle in recognition of his achievements.
