Ferkai András: Housing Estates - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

Housing Estates after 1945

pendently from the streets. The self-contained slab blocks and towers of flats were easier to arrange, and—last but not least—they were easier to build to standard designs of prefabricated units.

The housing estate was built according to the second development plan, south of Üllői út, between 1958 and 1964. The northern side of the street displays a strange transition between the two comprehensive designs. That is because the political leadership insisted that the construction of 800 flats begin before the end of 1955, regardless of the new development plan being prepared. That is the reason why the symmetrical arrangement of the blocks between Somfa and Dráva streets (by Emil Zöldy, Lakóterv) harkens back to the spirit of the 1950s. True, the four-storey building behind the monumental six-storey constructions in front are of a fashionable triangular design, and the cylindrical restaurant-cum- confectioner’s in the middle has more to do with the modern trade-union resorts of Sochi or Varna than with Stalin's Moscow. The explanation is the fact that construction was not completed before 1959.

Begun with the slum-clearance in Mária Valéria district in 1957, construction work was progressing at an even pace on the other side of Üllői út. The new technology of assembling prefabricated brick units was introduced here (1858—59), and then, from i960, a row of buildings was constructed of foamed slag bricks

■ Tower blocki on the Attila Józsefi Housing estate (János Pomsár, c. i960)

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