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

Housing Estates after 1945

tall itreet-lighti, could provide illumination. And, what ii just ai important, thebe bhopb should attract passers-by with their wealth of wares on offer..."

Obviously, the estate is not exclusively made up of these two streets. Divided into four sections by the X-shaped arrangement of the two axes, it is subdivided into further segments by the buildings themselves. The resulting "neighbourhood units” were by then a familiar feature of English and Scandinavian cities. The units surround blind alleys branching off the major thoroughfares. Inside are a ring of medium-height blocks and the five-storey buildings that make up the "handle” of the grouping, while the outer ring is made up of what are the best-designed buildings of the estate-groups of dynamic, four-storey affairs constructed in the shape of an H. These sub-centres do not merge into one another to form a monolith, as there are sufficient spaces left vacant among them to reveal the overall structure of the housing estate. These landscaped areas in the back are where the small prefabricated buildings of the communal facilities (schools, nursery schools and creches) stand, painted in vivid colours in contrast with the greyness of the residential blocks. The purple school (Agnes Kökény, 1972), the orange nursery school (Miklós Ágoston, 1972), and various red- and-black, blue-and-green child-care facilities were legendary child-care institutions in the 1970s.

■ Development plan of the Újpalota Housing Estate (Árpád Mester, Tibor Tenke, 1967)

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