Prakfalvi Endre: Architecture of Dictatorship. The Architecture of Budapest between 1945 and 1959 - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

suggests office rooms of equal rank. The fagade is perfectly candid in the way it reveals the modern (reinforced concrete) structure. The arched shape of the conference hall serves the lighting of the rooms behind it [!] ... The new headquarters is a shining proof of the potential at the disposal of the new [Socialist] Hungary - in comparison so-called Greater Hungary was able to build no more than three ministerial head offices from the [Austro-Hungarian] Compromise to recent times. The construction is also suggestive of the importance attributed to the people’s army by our democratic government.”

“1 will not,” continued Révai in 1951, “speak of the Ministry of the Interior [19 Széchenyi rakpart, ParliamenThe former Ministry of the Interior

tary Offices today; Ágost Benkhard, László Gábor, Lajos Gádoros, Gyula Rudnai], which looks like a paper box from a distance imprisoning the stag-beetles of a boy who has punched wholes in the sides so that the insects can breathe.” In the same key did others criticise the “expensive and meaningless” architecture of the multi-storey building on the Danube bank, the leaning-walled buildings defacing the cityscape with their “wild-west” style such as the bus terminal in Sztálin tér or the second stage of the Defence Ministry under construction at the time in Balaton utca. Moreover, continues the contemporary criticism, there are buildings, as for example the Planning Office of Public Buildings (12 Kecskeméti utca, district V; Egon

29