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

The worker's colony of the Hungarian Railways

■ Mdvag Homing Citate: the auditorium

tural assembly has a closed, fortress-like arrangement. The entrances to the individual buildings open from the courtyard, which is accessible by way of gateways with railings located in the four major axes. Missing is the customary feature of tenement blocks in Budapest, the outside galleries leading to the flats, which can here be accessed only via internal staircases. Originally recommended as early as 1913 by László Warga in his urban development plan for Kelenföld, the widespread frame-layout of the 1920s and 1930s was first applied here. The frame is broken on the Golgota-utca side, where a huge community building stands. Within the bisected courtyard are two more U-shaped galleried apartment blocks. Aside from its ten two and three-room civil-servants’ flats, the estate contained 645 workers' bedsits with a kitchen belonging to each. The architecture of the buildings is modest and economical with red-brick strips framing the plastered facades and the windows. Its modest exterior does not betray the magnificent structure of the community block. The reinforced-concrete shell is revealed in the spacious lobby already, to continue on the beam-and-pillar structure of the restaurant on the ground floor. The greatest surprise is held by the three-nave banqueting hall on the first floor. The central nave is covered by an elliptical barrel-vault once featuring a row of skylights on either side. The aisles are spanned above by robust beams made of reinforced concrete (called Vierendel trusses).

The Mávag estate is also an example of welfare and social responsibility. All sorts of services were made available here for the tenants. There was a

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