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

After World War I

century France or Germany and then, later, in the German and Russian architecture of the 1910s, which spread to virtually the whole of Scandinavia in the twenties. Thus Hikisch’s housing estate goes beyond echoing the typology characterising welfare housing in Vienna-the symmetrical composition of the Hofs with their closed interior courtyards-to include allusions to the "Northern Classicism" dominant in contemporary Swedish, Danish and Finnish architecture. Due to the vogue of postmodernism, the symbolic suggestions of Neo-Classicism about the facades are possibly appreciated once again, but the unadorned staircases are slighted with their simple artificial-stone covering, oil-painted walls and wooden railing in these times of snobbery and pretension. That is despite the fact that the welfare-housing policies of the period produced very similar buildings in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. True, those blocks are regularly maintained and are not now defaced with cheap-looking post-boxes and naked cabling on the walls.

The municipality of Budapest built small flats in new locations in 1928-29, financed from its own coffers. Of these, special mention is to be made of the townhouses at the corner of Németvölgyi út and Fery Oszkár (today’s Kiss János altábornagy) utca. The designers were selected in a public competition. It was at the exhibition of designs submitted to the competition that the general public had its first chance to see Modernist designs, in this case those made by Pál

■ The development plan of the townhousei on Bécsi út

28