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

Housing Estates after 1945

■ Scale model of the Kelenföld Homing Citate

megyer did not fit in with the development project made for Kelenföld. The draft plans of the eleven-storey slab blocks were rushed through in five weeks with the site-drawings completed within four months (architecture by Tibor Csordás and István Árkai; structural engineering by Jenő Gilyén). The buildings consisted of six tripartite sections: in section A, with two two-room flats and a single-room one, and in section B with two two-room apartments and one containing a single room and a closet. The average floor space per flat was 55.2 square metres. Each flat featured a built-in cupboard, a kitchen with built-in furniture and an interior bathroom ventilated artificially. The otherwise well-appointed flats had an only 2.54 metre-high ceiling, which created a rather depressing interior (even though the low height was in proportion with the small rooms). The street-side facade made of pebble-surfaced concrete is "enlivened'’ by the shifted-level staircase and drying-room windows and their painted frames on the street front, while the courtyard-front is articulated with loggias and windows set in tinted horizontal stripes. The other standard design used on the estate, that of the sixteen-storey point-house, was also made in the studios of TT1 (architecture by Zoltán Farkasdy; structural engineering by József Thoma) and is based on sliding shutter technology. There are eight small flats of 44 square metres each on every storey of these high-rises.

When the Ministry of Architecture approved the standard designs in 1964, they were ready to be applied to local circumstances. The work was done by Lakóterv, where the development plans were drawn up by Jakab Zoltán and

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