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

Apartments in Knurr Pálné utca, Óbuda

principles” was made. (In all likelihood, the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from such fine distinctions is irredeemably lost to us.) However, observes the critic, as the two buildings had the same floorplan, the same size and the same structure (both being made of brick), the “manner" of the facade was the sole source of a detectable difference. Not even Körner's work is then likely to have fully satisfied the requirements of architectural Socialist Realism, because its essence could not be captured in “costume design”. (A better approximation to the ideal was achieved by Körner in 1952-53, with his design for the District II Party Headquarters (today the local municipality), which duly earned him the Ybl Award with its colonnade spanning, piano nobile, the two storeys and a no longer extant trophy composed of flags and a five-pointed star.) In terms of the overall impression made by it, his apartment block was more of an Eclectic than a Classicist style, and yet it provided “eloquent justification” of a renewed spirit in architecture, in spite of the “restyling” following from constraints imposed by circumstances.

Budapest was not only the bastion of Hungary’s proletariat but also, in the nomenclature of the time, “the centre of world famous Hungarian sports". The history of how the People’s Stadium, that “great achievement of our five- year plan," was designed and built displays every characteristic of the age and every burden that weighed it down. The project began to take shape in 1948 (the centenaiy of the revolution) on the drawing table of Károly Dávid and

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