Ferkai András: Shopfronts - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1996)

planned the firm’s image, created easily identifiable, recurrent features - those on the shopfronts included a violet sun-blind, an unpolished silver sign and the door’s push plate with a logo on it, while among the standard interior features were a grid-like rack made of chromium plated tubes, a false ceiling, and the colours black, violet and claret. However, the image design was not the same as the earlier standard design. The individual shops could differ in size and construction, since only certain required elements and colours were obligatory. Thus it was easy to adapt the shops to local conditions and even existing shop windows and doorways could be used. It was the fault of those making the adaptations that by interpreting the image design somewhat rigidly they almost invariably used the quarter- spherical dome, invented to shade arched apertures on the frontages, even when the shop window behind did not end in an arch.

The frontage of the Gerbeaud confectionery and café (7 Vörösmarty tér, District V) illustrates how the views of designers and builders had changed by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prior to that period, the worst new design was thought to be superior to anything old simply because it was more “modern”. The entrenched belief in progress and anything new began to vanish when the symptoms of crisis affecting the country’s centralized economy couldn’t be disguised any more. Mihály Ráday’s television series on urban protection played a great part in encouraging

Frontage of the Gerbeaud confectionery, 7 Vörösmarty tér, V

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