Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 6. (Budapest, 2011)

Recenziók

Abstracts

411

characteristic of post-industrial cities. All around, industrial enterprises and high- rise estates housing tens of thousands of people, continued to grow. The centre, however, became more distinctive, and alongside political and administrative institutions, a centre grew up that definitely served cultural-entertainment and consumer urban demands.

ENDRE PRAKFALVI

Salgótarján.

The paradigm of Kádár-era urban construction?

The greenfield development launched in Sztálinváros in 1950 - a huge iron works and a new town - imposed a highly ideologised worldview on the town’s architecture. Sztálinváros, now Dunaújváros, stands out as a model, a paradigm, among the new socialist towns and industrial centres founded in the first half of the nineteen fifties, even though a key element of the plan, the main square, was not built.

By contrast, for the reconstruction of Salgótarján after 1956, built on the village/town centre, the new architecture did not draw on a comprehensive set of normative aesthetic criteria. Both regimes (Mátyás Rákosi, János Kádár) may have declared socialist realism as the proper mode of art, but Kádár’s Hungarian Socialist Workers Party did not declare a specific style preference.

The building of Salgótarjánt main square and town centre started with György Jánossy’s Karancs Hotel, which “created a town around it”. György Szrogh’s community centre and József Finta’s shopping centre were outstanding achievements of the “broadening” architecture of the Kádár Era, landmarks of their time. Another definitive building, in terms of architectural aesthetics, of the town centre in the broader sense (its centre of gravity oscillated over time) was Géza Magyar’s Film Theatre and Museum. The main square and town centre could stand as a paradigm in terms of its architectural qualities. This will be confirmed by the passage of time. Or is all worldly glory merely transient?