HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN ARCHITECTURE – 2

MASS PRODUCTION AND HUMAN SCALE

Challenge of quantity

1950s, 1960s international trends = 1960s 1970s trends in Hungary

= a period featured by the adoration of technology

Technology as innovation and symbol: remember the high-rise story

Technology as a means of increasing production, demand for quantity

Target: housing estates, new towns – prefabrication and standardization

Large scale housing utopias and realizations internationally:

Yona Friedman (Ville Spatial 1958-1962), Archigram (Walking City 1962),

Constant (New Babylon 1960-1970), Candilis-Josic-Woods…

Hungary: ZALOTAY Elemér, “the strip building” story from 1958 up to now…

1958 –1964 Experimental housing estate, Óbuda (former brick yard)

Competition for 1/construction, 2/houses, 3/furniture =

First phase: 21 dwellings all different, from 2 to 4 storeys

1960 –Governmental decision: to build 1 million flats within the next 15 years (1975)

Two basic means: industrialized building technologies + standardization

After the first experiments with new technologies the government buys the know-how of two house-factories in short time = Denmark + Soviet Union

1966 –Production starts in the first house-factory (prefabricated panels)

THEORISTS INTERPRET THE NEW AESTHETICS

Architecture and Mass Production, 1963 (a book by BONTA János)

“Abstract, geometrical cubes and monotone grid-like surfaces of prefabricated houses form a background behind the freely evolving, plastic shapes of cable and shell structures.”

“Housing blocks ordered in grid do not only create a screen behind the individually shaped public building but they form a work of art as an ensemble.”

NEW TOWN CENTRE – Salgótarján

  • Hotel Karancs (1959-63, JÁNOSSY György, HRECSKA János)
  • Cultural centre and library (1961-65, SZROGH György)
  • Shopping centre (1967-68, FINTA József)

Reviewers appreciated the project:

“At last a composition was born in this case, which was brought together.”

“It expresses a crystalline compositional order, simplified up to the ultimate limit, none would otherwise make it.”

“The core of urban composition is: the community centre positioned between the tall, standing mass of Hotel Karancs and the longitudinal mass of the housing block set on its edge.”

Monumental architecture, representative town centre

Means: geometrical masses + scale + rhythm...

TIME GOES ON – SLOW CHANGE

1968 – “New Economic Mechanism” was introduced – easing political environment

But the 1 million flats still had not been built =

Large housing estates and prefabricated technology are still the only accepted solution – but some cautious criticism emerges that they should be more human

1968 - The first report on a sociological survey, which was made among the inhabitants of new housing estates, was edited.

URBANISTS’ MAIN PROBLEMS

-new estates are separated from the town, they are in the outskirts

-they are empty on workdays

-there are no references of the past

-they are often schematic and monotone in form

Suggestion: Importance of continuity, human scale and users’ involvement –

All these things are more desires than real opportunities.

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE A FEW EXCEPTIONS – LUCKY COINCIDENCES

NEW TOWN CENTRE – Szekszárd

  • Office Buildings (1965-69, JURCSIK Károly)
  • Warehouse (1968-70, JURCSIK Károly, VARGA Levente)
  • Party Headquarter (1969-72, JURCSIK Károly, VARGA Levente)

OCTOBER 15. 2013.