Malnai and Haasz: social housing on the Hungaria ring street

This building of the architects Malnai and Haasz was built 1909-1910.

From Akos Moravanszky we know that the lack of effective measures of

social housing in the Danube monarchy lead 1907-1910 to a movement of

the renters, as a consequence of which with help of foreign credits

communal residences with low rent were built. The social

responsability of architecture, which influenced the works of Malnai,

found a first architectonic expression in this group of rental houses

with small dwellings. The built complex consists of residential

buildings around an interior courtyard, contrary to other contemporary

examples in symmetrical layout. Fences, pergolas and kiosks connect

the houses. The corner was emphasized through a five storey tower

shaped wing. This simple but expressive, monumental shape is a

precursor of the forms language of the Viennaise courtyards in the

20th, according to Akos Moravanszky. The dwellings can be reached over

an access balcony and the plans are economically efficient. Such two

room apartments with bathroom appear also after the war only seldomly

in social housing, so Moravanszky.