Expression of energy: The architecture of power stations in Hungary between 1945 and 1970 part I.

Abstract

The study in two parts discusses the architectural characteristics of power stations built in Hungary from 1945 to 1970, reviewing the period’s social, architectural and technological background, as well as those factors that exerted an influence on power station architecture in these 25 years. The study points out that despite the dominance of technological systems in the case of this building type, Hungarian architects were able to create autonomous designs by their various interpretations of monumentality as a unique aesthetic quality. The first part of the study focuses on the processes that took place in the Rákosi era (1948-1956). It mainly explores the interplay between the structural and formal characteristics resulting from on-site concrete precasting, the technological demands imposed by the electricity industry and the stylistic expectations of socialist realist ideology, and shows how this led to a kind of classicizing monumentality that also manifested in the area of engineering.