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

In spite of the unequivocal assignment, no work comparable to the great model came into being, apart from the appointment of the sites such as the Pest end of Sztálin (Árpád) Bridge. What came closest to evoking Muscovite models was Sándor Palcsik and Pál Virágh’s office block (1953-54) in the Ganz Railway Carriage Factory (at the corner of Könyves Kálmán körút and Vajda Péter utca, district VIII). Although, as Máté Major put it, an “important role was to be played by the unceasing concentration on the endless possibilities lying ahead in a Socialist future,” the heroic enthusiasm of earlier plans was already gone when a newly subjected conception was considered at the joint meeting of the Capital City Council and the Budapest Party Bureau in 1955. The objective of the plan was no more than to “provide our people’s economy with the development of cost-efficient buildings (this is the time when the so-called “CS” flats, i.e. csökkentett komfortfokozatú, or “flats with limited conveniences” appeared), capable of satisfying the ever increasing material and cultural expectations of the population”. Although the plan’s main objective was still to evolve a type of Socialist city differing radically from a capitalist city, “to guarantee the best living conditions possible for the population in terms of workplace, flats, recreation and transport”, it also proclaimed the need for a beautiful city, now without any qualifying epithets.

However, the solving of the accumulated problems related to comprehensive urban rehabilitation had been postponed even before the conference when a the Politburo resolved that the second five-year plan (starting in 1955) be the basis of Budapest’s development. And in early 1956, the issue was removed from the agenda altogether, the inadequate nature of the long-term plan of the people’s economy being identified as the reason for the cancellation.

It was probably the acute housing shortage that made the Politburo, in opposition to the visionary ideas put forward by architects, insist on the relevance to the cityscape of apartment blocks rather than public buildings at the 1953 conference. It is in this context and, perhaps in an even greater measure, in light of the stylistic about-turn that was to be executed that the story of two particular buildings provides much insight. The constructions in question are the seven-storey dual blocks erected south of the Buda-side abutment of Árpád Bridge in Knurr Pálné ut34