The Appearance of Prefabrication as a Subject in Architectural Education at the Budapest Technical University

Uniting Theory and Practice in Modern Construction Activities in the Decade after 1945

Abstract

The building economics demands after World War II required creative and imaginative engineering work from the actors of the construction industry. For the participants of the process, factory prefabrication and on-site installation presented the possibility of applying reinforced concrete structures economically. These structures had already been present in the modern engineering mindset for decades in the interwar period.
From 1949 onwards, centralised state control developed in Hungary, and the new economic policy also expressed a methodological change in education. An essential background of this practice was the training of architects at the Budapest Technical University, in accordance with the new needs of the construction industry. What effect did the development, dictated by the state, have on the evolution of the Hungarian construction industry, and what advances did it highlight compared to the innovations between the two world wars?
The study explores connections and correlations between theoretical knowledge and practical experience at the time and examines the transformation of architectural education through an objective analysis of documents. In addition to the exploratory research of archival materials, we place particular emphasis on the exploration of personally experiential processes by including an accurate picture of contemporary developments through oral history. With the scientifically evaluated data, the study is the first to examine the characteristics of Hungarian engineering education of the period introducing the most innovative designers of the Hungarian construction industry to transfer practical living knowledge at the university level.