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

Construction in Béke üt in the autumn of 1950

vite" productivity competitions, which were named after the famous Soviet “model” worker (József Schall, István Fiszer, from 1948). Office blocks were also built at the time, for example one at No. 10 Báthory utca, district V (Béla Hegedűs, József Málik, Miklós Takács, 1949) or another at No. 5 Belgrád rakpart, district V (Nándor Körmendy, 1949).

In 1948, Virgil Borbíró, in his capacity of under-secretary at the ministry of architecture, responded to Major’s book. In an unpublished (unpublishable) letter addressed to his colleagues he argued persuasively to salvage whatever was salvageable of architectural modernity at a time when, in the wake of a general shift towards the political left, the primacy of Socialist Realism promoted by the ruling powers was increasingly felt everywhere.

It is probably not without interest to suggest here what kind of life Borbíró envisaged as being lived behind the smooth and symmetrical fagades of a strictly puritanical appearance, in the homes where

"every detail is determined by the architectural designer in order to provide the material conditions of a joyful human existence.

How, using what methods, can this be achieved?

Above all by the proper assessment, through the exercise of utmost circumspection, of every aspect of family life, determining its circumstances and location from providing the proper place for hats and coats to designing a living room where each member of the family can find an appropriate setting for his or her activities: the wife her sewing table, the child its play corner, the stu22