Farkas Molnár: Functionalism and socialist architecture

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[...] Farkas Molnár: Functionalism and socialist architecture Budapest following World War I was a very different place than it had been only fifteen years before. With its crippling military defeat, the loss of some of its most productive and resource-rich land to the new Trianon borders, and a cycle of radical, ineffective and brutal regimes, the sense of optimism that had characterized turn of the century Hungary was effectively snuffed out. Following Béla Kún's short-lived communist regime in 1919 Admiral Horthy came to power and imposed a quasi-fascistic authoritarian order that put much effort into suppressing dissident movements. [...]

[...] To a certain extent Molnár and the CIAM East did succeed, as their ideas for collective housing and minimum subsistence would eventually influence communist estate architecture (and, disregarding economic and social costs of their construction, these estates did raise the standard of living of poor Hungarians). It is telling that what the police captain had interpreted as anti-government agitation was merely considered practical application of architectural principles by the designers. They were not attempting to influence revolution, but were thinking of ideas to solve the very real crises they saw their country faced with. [...]

[...] In 1920, after the fall of the communist regime and before he had finished his degree study, he emigrated to Germany. He studied at the influential modernist Bauhaus school in Weimar where he designed his pioneering Cube” building in 1922. After his studies he returned to Budapest to throw his weight into the chaotic social-political situation. The strong influx of Hungarians from the minority territories in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, coupled with the municipal authorities' inadequate response to the situation, had led to a housing shortage of nearly two hundred thousand units (Lesnikowski, p. [...]