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

Housing Estates after 1945

■ Row of buiidingi made of teamed slag bricki (c. i960)

to various standard designs (prototype by Dezső Cserba, 1959). The medium- height, eight-to-nine-storey, buildings were raised almost simultaneously (by Béla Nakos, 1959), of moulded concrete internal walls and prefabricated units in the front. The prefabricated slabs of the fagade are as-yet hidden behind a plaster and paint coating; the lower buildings were painted white, with which the taller ones contrasted in colour, while the back surfaces of the balconies were painted in pastels. After 1961, the distinctively-shaped and variegated constructions of the early phases were followed by mechanically reproduced massive blocks, which were in their turn replaced by medium-height ones with prefab slabs in the fagades and interior walls made of moulded concrete (design by Béla Bakos 1961, construction 1962—63). The two sides of the estate along Üllői út were meant to be accentuated by high-rises of an individual design. The only one to be constructed of these was Géza Magyar’s slab block of flats at the intersection with Dési Huber út. With its mass weighing at right angles to the main street, it provides an appropriate backdrop to the low shopping mall at the Ecseri út corner. With the other high-rise scrapped, the vacant slab along Üllői út was later built over with eleven-storey prefab buildings, which block out the housing estate named for József Attila in the meantime.

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