Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)

Apartment Houses - High-Rises

World War II. The Board of Public Works devised a project for the demolition of all extant constructions in the area between the Vérmező Commons and Horváth Gardens where it then proposed a new development comprising six self-standing eight-storey buildings and a park. When the Board was disbanded in 1948, this ambitious plan was also discarded. One of the high-rises envisioned in the project was actually built, however, in 1967 to plans by Zoltán Boross assisted by stress analyst Ferenc Falus. The contractor was the Budapest Flat Builders Company (Bulav). As the building rose, so did the volume of critical remarks; wedged in between the Krisztina tér church and the side-walls of the nearby Castle Hill, this giant completely sealed off the square from the north. Also, as it reached above the height of the chimneys of neighbouring buildings, it caused the heating systems of lower apartment blocks to malfunction.

The fronts of the block were faced with limestone slabs. Installed in the ground- floor and first-floor areas was the largest OTP bank office of the Buda region. There were eight apartments arranged on each floor between storeys two to five and six more on each further floor above. The apartments face east, west and south. In the core of the building's monolithic reinforced-concrete structure and roof are two parallel stairwells, two lift shafts and one smaller shaft for rubbish- disposal.

Despite the unique view it affords, this fifteen-storey building became even more nondescript in appearance with the removal of the steel structure decorating its entire fagade at the end of the 20th century. Tenants of Buda’s first tower block included the late Ferenc Puskás, Hungary's world-famous football player, after whom the People's Stadium has been renamed.

Two in one - apartment block cum water tower

No. 71 Nyírpalota út, District XV

With its 15,500 flats, the Újpalota Housing Estate was one of Budapest’s largest development projects in the 1970s. It was here that a dual-function block was built including two steel reservoirs holding three hundred cubic metres of water each to guarantee safe water supply for the upper-storey flats on the estate. No longer used today, the peculiar shape of the tanks is still a characteristic feature of the estate's tallest building.

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