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

The People's Stadium. Reinforced concrete terraces THE “TEMPORARY” CLOSURE OF THE SOUTHERN FACADE

The “solemn doric tone” of the main building followed, in Dávid’s opinion, from the fact that it ended the dromos. The parade route, that functionless footway leading from nowhere to nowhere, would not have come into being had it not been for the stadium. As the authorities of the time believed, it became a “timely” requirement to create, with the involvement of the sister arts, a Gesamtkunstwerk of sorts. Pál Pátzay was commissioned to develop the project. He rejected any idea of decorating the curves of the terraces with representational motifs, as such ornamentation would have destroyed the effect of monumentality. He believed that “the immense tension of the stand’s curve is focused by the dressing-room tower,” which accordingly assigns the axis of the dromos. Another rejected idea was the installation of a series of reliefs, the planner concluding instead that a group of statues made of aluminium (that “Hungarian silver”) creating an effect of “branchy silhouettes” should be placed among a row of simple, geometrically shaped stone blocks. The theme of these was “predetermined” by their proximity to the stadium. Sixteen statues arranged in two rows were erected between 1953 and 1958. Featuring sports-related scenes and other genre motifs, the majority of the compositions consisted

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