Category: 2024

An Imperfect Circle: An Investigation into the Variations and Contrarian Phenomena of Several Unique Intrusive Ring Roads

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Wherever the circles of car infrastructures have been drawn onto the map of the city, invisible fortress walls have arisen. Disguised as arteries conveying essential life blood – but still as inaccessible as the stone walls that once guarded the town – the volatile nature of circular traffic belts surrounding a city makes them a […]

Urban Rings as Indicators of Urban Transformation: The City of Nikšić, Montenegro

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

After liberation from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, Nikšić became part of Montenegro, a sovereign and internationally recognized state after the Berlin Congress in 1878 became. With the permission of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, Croatian architect Josip Šilović Slade (1828–1911) was invited by Prince Nikola Petrović (1841–1924) to Montenegro, where he designed a series of significant […]

Replacing a River Canal with an Urban Highway: The “Gottwaldova Street” Ring Road in Košice as a Historical Urban Design Mistake from the 1960s

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Until the1960s, the east Slovak city of Košice displayed a ring road system, largely inspired by the models of Vienna and Budapest. During the 19th century, local city planners respected the natural interaction between the densely built-up structure and its adjacent recreational area to the east, consisting of the river canal, called the Millrace [Mlynský […]

Open Spaces, Green Areas: The Szeged Circular Embankment as a Green Ring in the Plans of Endre Pálfy-Budinszky

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

In 1879, the Hungarian city of Szeged was destroyed by the flooding Tisza River, necessitating its rebuilding from Lajos Lechner’s plans. With it, Szeged developed a central urban structure, with a circular embankment aligned with the boulevards protecting it from floods (Szegedi Körtöltés). In the 1930s, Dr. Endre Pálfy-Budinszky, Szeged’s chief architect, began developing a […]

A Lost Opportunity: The Case of the Košice Ring Road

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of the development of ring boulevards in Košice, to relate their emergence to the expansion of urban planning in the broader European region, and to explain why these boulevards do not fulfill the functions held by ring streets in the cities that served as […]

The History and Context of the Brno Ring Boulevard

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Frequently compared to Vienna’s Ringstrasse, the Brno ring boulevard must nonetheless – despite the shared association with Ludwig Förster – be considered a completely unique urban development, dating to the end of the 18th century. Competition proposals for the design of the Brno ring boulevard predetermined the final form of the regulatory plan, which was used […]

Urban Transitions in Kraków in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: The Inner and Outer Rings

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Significant changes took place in the urban space of Kraków in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, partly related to the liquidation of the old city fortifications (1806–1815). An oval-shaped park (Planty) was established in place of the demolished medieval fortifications and filled moats in 1815–1834. Then, a circular street was marked […]

From Functional Urban Planning to the Art of Shaping Cities: The Ring Roads of Antal Palóczi in Miskolc and Budapest

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

The study is focused on the unrealized plans for ring roads in Buda and Miskolc created by Antal Palóczi at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Palóczi’s approach combined functional urbanism with aesthetic principles rooted in the artistic shaping of urban spaces. This dual approach was aligned with contemporary urban planning trends, represented […]

The Green Rings of Budapest

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Though several attempts were made to create the Budapest Green Ring, it was never realized, keeping the green spaces of the city mutually isolated. Following 19th-century military innovations and the change in the position of traditional defenses, a rebirth occurred of the areas between the historic city center and the outer, with the development pattern […]

The Hungária Ring Road of Budapest

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

In 1872, the Metropolitan Public Works Council decided on three rings for the capital of Budapest: the inner ring (Small Boulevard), the outer ring (Great Boulevard) and the suburban ring. Completing the Great Boulevard – including the two bridges connecting the Pest side with Buda – took about 20 years. In contrast, the suburban ring […]

Tendencies in Urban Fabric Extension at the Turn of the Century and Beyond: Networks and Centralization in the Urban Planning of the 11th District of Budapest

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

South Buda (11th district of Budapest), as an artificially designed district, displays a revealing combination of urban design tendencies at the turn of the previous century. Its development was preceded by a multi-stage urban planning process in which the ring-radius idea, the network and early garden city ideas emerged in interaction with each other. The […]

The Historicist Architecture of the Grand Boulevard in Budapest and Its Urbanistic Significance

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

The legacy of Hungarian historicist architecture has only attracted the attention of researchers in the past few decades. Although the Renaissance and Baroque Revival were the dominant architectural styles of the Habsburg era, historicism was long seen as an architecture copying the past using cheaper materials. Characterized by the reinterpretation of historical styles with contemporary […]

Circles of Expansion – An Introduction

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 3-4

Put simply, cities can grow in two ways: linear and circular. Of course, with countless transitional forms existing between the two polarities. Social conditions, such as different centres of political power, or natural ones like rivers or hills, can deeply influence a given city’s layout.1 However, the physical form of the expansion should be definitely […]

On the Path to Urban Deconcentration
Housing Construction in the Hinterland Zone of Wrocław at the End of the 20th Century

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

The socialist period in Poland and other states in Central and Eastern Europe was associated with the country’s planned industrialisation and urbanisation. The effect of such a policy was the progressive development of urban areas, especially large cities, and an increase in the concentration of population in their area. This growth was fostered by the […]

Solving the Housing Crisis in Interwar Košice
Examples of Social Housing for the Unemployed and Impoverished

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

Even prior to the First World War, the challenging or indeed catastrophic housing situation in Košice was a regular topic of discussion in the city’s press. The war years, followed by the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the establishment of the First Czechoslovak Republic, threw the city into an entirely new reality, yet still […]

The Synagogue in Trenčín and Its Authors
A Transformation of Architectural Traditions through Modernity

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

The synagogue in Trenčín is one of the most important examples of synagogue or sacral architecture of the early 20th century in Slovakia, but also of the architecture of this period in the wider Central European region. As a result, it is mentioned in many texts, though its published information differs in many ways. In […]

The Healthcare Policy of the First Czechoslovak Republic
The Case of Uzhhorod

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

After Subcarpathian Ruthenia became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1919, the government faced numerous challenges in the development of the healthcare system in the region and its capital. The paper aims to examine the impact of the Republic’s legislative framework and the peculiarities of Uzhhorod’s needs on priorities in the construction and, in […]

Preservation Issues of Architecture from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

Late Modernist architectural works are confronted with an ambivalent situation between heritage acknowledgement and physical destruction. The text aims to explain the growing interest in their protection as a natural evolution of monument preservation, yet simultaneously questions the effectiveness of current procedures regarding the specifics of the given architecture. The Mäusebunker case study illustrates an […]

Polish Modernism’s Essentialist Claim
The Hansens and Open Form Architecture

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

This paper traces the continuities between the post-war Polish husband-and-wife architect duo of Oskar and Zofia Hansen, and their predecessors from the interwar avant-garde, the husband-and-wife artist duo of painter Władysław Strzemiński and sculptor Katarzyna Kobro. It argues that the Hansens’ Open Form (1958) approach extended the essentialism of Strzemiński and Kobro’s theory of Unism […]

Exclusive Histories, Unseen Narratives

Issue: 2024, Volume 58, Number 1 – 2

The canon is generally understood as a body of the most important personalities and key works in a particular field, and for various reasons it evokes an impression of objectivity and impartiality. But is it really objective, or does it exclude someone or something? The study provides a critical reflection on the principles of the […]