Nimbusz és identitás. Az IPARTERV tevékenységének recepciója a korai Kádár-korszakban

Abstract

The imposition of socialist realism caused great loss of prestige and intellectual confusion in Hungarian architecture. After 1956, in the first years of the Kádár era it was preoccupied by a sort of “self-rehabilitation” and by the related aim of reviving Hungarian modernism. In this period of search the new architectural phenomena in industrial investments attracting the attention of designers and architecture theoreticians active in other areas of architecture assumed special significance. Under the industrializing programs central to the party propaganda, there was clear-cut political intention for a long time to build materially and technically good-quality, well-designed, monumental industrial building complexes. Architectural creativity received a great boost from the efforts to create structural systems in view of the western engineering innovations and tendencies of form, adapted flexibly to the specificities of the industrializing program launched in the late 1950s, to the new technological systems and the transforming conditions of the building industry and economy. It is not accidental therefore that a certain nimbus evolved soon around the central institution of the field, the Industrial Building Design Company (IPARTERV): the company gradually became a special creative workshop, and industrial architectural planning became a booming branch of the economy. The reception of the IPARTERV activity in the early Kádár era was dominated by the emergence of this nimbus. The aim of the paper is to explore the decisive architectural and engineering approaches, personal and collective planning roles, architectural theoretical tendencies and political factors that shaped the specific role of this company.