Kiss Katalin: Industrial Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

View of the Kelenföld Power Station aroünd 1930

1914. Its building was designed by the university professor Kálmán Reichl. The characteristic tower was built in 1926. It served as a stairway to the boiler room, contained the plant’s water supply and when dark fell it showed the time with its large illuminated clock, two metres in diameter. The tower and the 30/10 kV electric substation were designed by Virgil Bierbauer (Borbíró), one of the most distinguished architects of the inter-war period. He was a tireless innovator, an architecture critic, and a fertile architect himself, who preferred modern materials, structures and the genuine presentation of function. His biting criticism of the previously mentioned electric substation in Szentendrei út as resembling an ancient temple was so powerful that from that time on the two famous architects involved simply omitted this work from their CVs.

The central building of the Kelenföld power station is a steel concrete structure. Its inner brick walls serve only to divide the space. The attractive brick panelling with its light and shadow effects gives a pleasing atmosphere to the enormous surfaces. However, the modernization of the station’s electric equipment will sooner or later lead to the demise of the building’s function, as with the electric substations in Markó utca.

(Amongst the power stations, electric stations and substations of this period a surprisingly large number are decorated with various elements of classical archi46