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

Abstract

Part I of this study reviewed the architecture of power stations in Hungary in the period from 1945 to 1955. The introductory sections gave a summary of the architectural and technological background to power station design in the quarter of a decade that followed World War II. Through the analysis of power stations in Inota, Dunaújváros, Kazincbarcika and Tiszapalkonya, the first part highlighted the interplay between the structural and formal characteristics resulting from on-site concrete precasting – which defined industrial architecture in Hungary in the Rákosi era –, the technological requirements imposed by the electricity industry and the stylistic expectations of socialist realist ideology that led to a kind of classicizing monumentality, which also manifested in the area of engineering.

The second part of the study discusses the developments from the mid-1950s to around 1970. From a structural, technological and aesthetic point of view, these fifteen or so years can be divided into two periods. The first and shorter one, lasting up to 1960, was characterised by new solutions linked to a change of direction in structural innovation and to the fresh ambitions of Hungarian architecture that returned to modernism. This stage represents a type of transition between the period of 1949-1955 and the 1960s, burdened by serious architectural problems created by the so-called open-air technological systems.