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

Housing Estates after 1945

■ Ten&torey prefab block from Stage I of the Kápoóztáimegyer Homing Development

of House Factory No. 3 was decided on; a location south of Dunakeszi, close to the development area, was allocated for the site of the new plant. Cheap transportation was a major argument in favour of Káposztásmegyer as the location of the new development. The basis of the competition was the series of "cellular" prefab designs worked out by TTI for the Budafok House Factory. The entries qualifying on top envisaged a dense, urban arrangement with a linear structure and a direct connection between the public institutions of the centre and the residential areas. The fundamental idea of the first-prize-winning design (by Ferenc Callmeyer, Tibor Tenke, Árpád Mester and Tibor Környe, TTI-Buváti) was similar to that of the simultaneously-built Újpalota housing estate with the difference that rather than the diagonal cross of the two axes employed in Újpalota, here it is an L-shaped dual slab around which the neighbourhood was to be organised. The result of the 1967 competition was seen to have brought a radical change in urban development. However, it was only in Újpalota where the designers' ideas took material form. The Tenke-Mester duo completed their detailed development plans for Káposztásmegyer in 1973, but nothing really happened for a long time. By the time the development of the neighbourhood was put on the agenda again, the trend of postmodernism had taken Hungary by storm. The earlier design was thus rendered obsolete. Tenke was dead, with

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