(b Vienna, 21 Aug 1930). Canadian architect of Hungarian descent. She studied architecture at the University of Technical Sciences, Budapest, and was an assistant professor at the School of Architecture there in 1952–3. She was involved with housing projects in Hungary before she and her husband, architect Andrew Vecsei, went to Montreal in the aftermath of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. She became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1962. Vecsei was involved in some of the largest developments of the period in Montreal. From 1964 to 1970 she was an associate with the firm Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebengold, Sise, where she was a designer on the Place Bonaventure (1964–8). This huge multi-use complex, which covers six acres in eastern downtown Montreal, is constructed in a largely Modernist idiom; its appearance is stark and cubical, yet it has a monumental presence. A more complex articulation characterizes the seven-acre complex La Cité (1973–7), Montreal, Vecsei’s first project as head of her own firm (from 1973). Built in a climate of hostility to high-rise developments and, at times, daunting financial constraints (which made it necessary to redesign the project several times), Vecsei successfully integrated a network of high-rise buildings (three apartment blocks, an office tower and hotel) and underground structures (shops, restaurants and circulation areas). The L-shaped apartment towers rise gradually in steps away from the street that divides them, responding to the scale of the surrounding churches and rows of town houses. Vecsei believed in the intellectual integrity of Modernist architecture—its focus on geometry, simplicity and repetition and its harmony of structure, plan and materials—yet felt that these could lead to a bland lack of creativity and inventiveness. She therefore advocated bold surface treatment and the use of decoration, and this approach distinguishes La Cité from Place Bonaventure.