THE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE OF LARGE PREFABRICATED HOUSING ESTATESIN HUNGARY, ROMANIA AND SERBIA

Mirjana Laban Advanced Technical School, Novi Sad, Serbia, vtsns@metrohive.net

Abstract: Large prefabricated housing estates built using industrial construction methods are to be found in almost every urban settlement in west European countries, as well as in central and eastern Europe. These mass housing areas, which where developed during the era of “State socialism”, form the largest proportion of homogeneous “modern” dwellings in main cities in Hungary, Romania and Serbia, too. According to sustainability criteria, quality of those buildings beginning to emerge as problematic. In view of their sheer number, they will inevitably remain an extremely important part of housing stock in our countries in decades to come. As it’s known, no large housing estates are being built today, but maintaining and improving these huge stocks of dwelling represent an enormous task for sustainable urban future of our cities.

This paper presents the state of the art in city of Budapest, Bucharest and Novi Sad, based on recent researching that was done by European institutions (Hungary and Romania) and author herself, regarding Novi Sad, Serbia. Comparing case studies, results and conclusions, respecting good practice examples, as well as our urban characteristic differences, we can reach sustainable solutions and contribute to knowledge shearing in European field of science and contemporary building technologies.

Key Words: Sustainable Urban Development/Urban Renewal/Topical Urban Planning/Large Prefabricated Housing Estates/Regional Cooperation

1 INTRODUCTION

Topical planning on urban renewal and redesign, on a single building as well as on a whole city areas, is the one of the most currently subjects in field of development the strategy of sustainable development of urban environment today[1]. Architecture as discipline, applied science and the art at the same time, special at the area of redefining of built urban environment, is the artefact origins from time and space of human existence, ought to demonstrate the multilevel and multidisciplinary approach and the highest level of dedication to humanization of living environment.

Multileveled and sensibility approach to urban renewal problematic is based on the city form redefining and assembling the built features into natural surrounding. Changing the shape, layout, function, structure according to tenants’ needs and environmental issues, we contribute designing the new contexts and character of city architecture. Sustainability concept also includes applying environmental-friendly building materials and technologies, chosen after ecological estimation and evaluation of existing built environment conditions (orientation, insulation, lighting, ventilation, energy efficiency, waste control, water and sanitation, green-house gases emission, life cycle assessment and recycling), as products of buildings and environment interaction.

Large prefabricated housing estates built using industrial construction methods are to be found in almost every urban settlement in west European countries, as well as in central and eastern Europe. These mass housing areas, which where developed during the era of “State socialism”, form the largest proportion of homogeneous “modern” dwellings in main cities in Hungary, Romania and Serbia, too. According to sustainability criteria, quality of those buildings beginning to emerge as problematic. In view of their sheer number, they will inevitably remain an extremely important part of housing stock in our countries in decades to come. As it’s known, no large housing estates are being built today, but maintaining and improving these huge stocks of dwelling represent an enormous task for sustainable urban future of our cities.

During past several years, growing awareness of the problem initiated many research projects across Europe. EU institutions are supporting those research in order to find the best solution regarding both similarities and differences and urban development sustainability as well.

Our country missed to take a part in any researching project, although the large prefabricated estates are our urban reality also. The aim of this paper is to compare available data [2], [3], [4], [5] from researching

done on the main cities in our region: Budapest / Hungary, Bucharest / Romania and Novi Sad / Serbia [6], as a modest contribution to knowledge shearing in European field of science.

2 LARGE PREFABRICATED HOUSING ESTATES IN OUR REGION

There are many common issues and conditions of urban development in Hungary, Romania and Serbia in second half of 20th Century. Looking at bigger picture, we are the part of Central and Eastern Europe, where »...more than 34 million people live in app. 600 housing estates of over 2.500 units, which were built during the state socialist period. Including the states of former USSR, the large prefabricated estates are the homes of 170 million people, which were built between 1960s and 1990. « [7]

Beside political and social conditions, common influence on housing development, in our region, has also major destruction caused by the Second World War, rapidly growing urban population levels due to migration from rural areas, industrialization, as well as desire to do better than traditional housing.

Large prefabricated housing estates often provide more than 30.000 dwellings for up to 500.000 inhabitants. While the flats themselves were often small, the standard of social and cultural infrastructure (schools, program for youth, cultural centers and clubs, parks, recreation areas) was usually very good and most areas were built with god connections via public transport to workplaces and city centers. Despite some similarities found in housing projects in the former state socialist countries between 1960 and 1990, the qualities of the buildings and construction standards vary greatly. Growing pressures of rationalization and economically forced cost-cutting, specially in the last decade, reduced the quality of construction and urban design and meant a neglect of building maintenance.

Significant number of those structures therefore occurred as decaying dwellings[8],[9], in neglected urban areas[10], suffering problems caused by the use of polluting building materials (e.g. asbestos), lack of insulation [11], and a complete absence of energy efficient technologies, wasteful water management system [12], [13], and poor fire-safety prevention measures [14], [15].

Illegal building interventions, mostly performed by tenants themselves, often are done applying inadequate designing, poor building materials and bad construction methods [16], additionally impacts on residential quality of dwellings and urban settlement in hole.

2.1. Budapest: the rehabilitation process [17]

The large-panel industrial building system in Hungary was based on prefabricated reinforced concrete panels, made in the soviet-style house-factory. Almost 14% (550.000 units) out of all new-built ones in period 1960-1990 are flats built in industrial way in Hungary.

Fig. 1.,2. Ujpalota, Budapest, XV district and Dunajvaros

The first large-panel building in Hungary was built in Budapest, in 1954. and the wide-range usage started in Dunajvaros, the new, big city established after 1950 as new town, for servicing the steel-industry nearby. 30 large housing estates exists in Budapest today, populated with 38% of city inhabitants. The biggest one is Ujpalota, XV District, with it’s 16.500 flats and 38.100 residents.

Units of housing estates, big-scale multi-residential buildings, are 5 (40%) or 11 (59%) story buildings, built with reinforced concrete panels, or light-concrete blocks, or in-situ concrete. 33% of these features was built in Budapest.

Typical building has simple layout: 3 - 4 small flats (48m2 – for persons) on each floor, with 2, 4 or 6 staircases, with 5 or 11 stories. Ground floor contains garages or storage rooms for waste and bikes. Kitchen was small, no dining area and no storage area.

Facades were simple, also: no terraces, no loggias, flat roof and small entrance. Only in late eighties changed a bit adding dinning and storage rooms for flats, some extra space (54-63m2 for four persons, but still no living room). At that time loggias or balconies were also included and sometimes color for ground floor elements.

Thermal insulation was poor, no sound insulation applied and heating and sanitary systems had low technical characteristics.

Long, strait buildings and streets, not connected with other parts of the city, also destructed existing urban context.

The rehabilitation process started with several pilot-projects in Hungary: Szeged - passive solar retrofitting (1995.), Budapest – Ujpest Municipality – Local Green City Building Strategy, Budapest – Dunajvaros - Solanova project (2005.-2007.), Budapest – Ujpalota – maping the main problems. All the movements are in the first stage. The prime results showed the complexity of the problem and interactivity of possible solutions.

2.2. Bucharest: de-systematization process [18]

The rehabilitation of the Large Housing Estates represents an issue of a major concern for Romanian Government, which has included the complex, integrated urban rehabilitation of the LHE among the basic objectives of its strategy for 2005-2008, within the physical planning chapter, having the central and local public administration nominated as responsible institutions. The rehabilitation of those urban area requires a systematic approach, considering that more than half of total Romania’s housing stock has exceeded the estimated span life and the whole housing stock built before 1990 will have the life cycle completed in the next 20 years.

Fig. 3., 4. Drumul Taberei, Bucharest, District 6 and typical housing block built in period of

“State socialism”

Collective, LHE areas which take the form of large ensembles of block of flats are to be found on the outskirts of the city or in semi central zones. Today exists 9 large prefabricated housing estates and 82% inhabitants of Bucharest live in those buildings. They were built in the course of 3 decades, especially between 1960 and 1985, housing around 1.300.000 residents. The height of blocks of flats ranges from ground floor + 4 stories and ground floor + 10 stories. The structure is brick for low buildings and reinforced concrete for high buildings.

50% of all LHE dates from time of state socialism. In order to develop the country, government started a program for rural resettlement. With the ultimate goal of a “multilateral developed socialist society”, this ambitious program, called “systematization”, was dramatically change the face o rural Romania. Officially initiated in 1974, the program call for doubling the number of cities by 1990. Some 550 villages were selected to receive money and materials necessary for their conversion to urban industrial centers. Other 3.000 villages, with fewer then 1000 inhabitants and no prospects for growth, were labeled as “irrational” and “nonviable”. Villages in these category were to be minimally serviced and gradually phased out, or scheduled to be forcibly dissolved and relocated.

Drumul Taberei is a neighborhood located in the south-west of Bucharest. The estate forms the major part of the “6th sector” and was built between 1955 and 1990 in three stages, each representing the dominant Romanian building type of that time. Contains 420 housing blocks with 24.136 flats with 399.000 inhabitants. Average floor space per flat is 57m2 and average inhabitants per flat are 2,7.

After 1986, the already high density increased even more as result of lower quality in-fills (small flats, no balconies, very short distances between buildings – only 2m in some cases). A planned commercial and cultural centre for the district was never built and the area lies barren.

Comprehensive planning and development strategies exist; theoretical knowledge base is present within the city administration, research institutions, architects, and planners, but cannot yet be translated into action because of a luck of funds; deficits in informal small-scale action strategies.

2.3. Novi Sad: State of the Art [6]

The research done as the base of the authors’ MA paper[6] considers a multi-residential buildings built by applying the industrial building technology in the city territory of Novi Sad. The recording, systematization and classification of buildings per type of the applied system of building (IMS, MONTASTAN, NS-71 ) were carried out and they have been shown of the city map.

Critical valorization of the selected examples was carried out through synthetic analysis based on the criteria determined in advance and in a accordance with the philosophy of thinking and theory of architecture of Novi Sad school of Architecture, applied materialization and building technology and perception of the built structures in compliance with the concrete social circumstances: the location, orientation and surroundings; programme contents and applicability; functional analysis of typical etage; purpose of the ground floor and socialization; form and shaping; construction and module; characteristics of the applied building technology; materialization and final processing of facades and roofs; economic efficiency of

transport of elements, building and maintenance of the built building, while the adaptability of the structure, possibility of revitalization, reconstruction and recycling have been selected as criteria in accordance with the concept of sustainability and defining of technical status of the building after a long-term exploitation is considered the exact aspect of evaluation of the building craft skill. The documentation background of the paper is made up of the original project-technical documentation, photographs and the research work at site, texts and reviews from the specialized bibliography that are relevant for the built physical structures, documents and materials collected in specialized services and the Archives of City of Novi Sad, as well as a number of discussions held with the participants in realization of buildings and parts of the city that have been built in an industrial way.

Fig. 5.,6., 7.: Novi Sad: Unused Danube river banks, Liman II & III in building period and today

The objective of the MA paper was to contribute to clarification of a typical period of city building and reconsideration of potential direction, ideas and possibilities of improvement of quality of housing, based on the principles of sustainable development and multi-disciplinarily of the art of building.

The intensive applying of industrial technology of building period in Novi Sad, as well as in Serbia, was the same period as in Romania and Hungary; 1960 – 1990.

The industrial way of building was applied at multifamily-multistory buildings, which were positioned on city edges, low density areas, with poor infrastructure. So the new-built housing blocks were unique and compact city areas in physically, technically and technologically way, with characteristic shaping, program, context and urban design subordinated to residential function and city area disposition.

City assembled and city shaping was impacted in characteristic way thanks to new building technology, and the look of the city and its' character was changed permanently at Liman, Bistrica, Detelinara, Novo naselje, as well as Bulevar Oslobođenja, Petrovaradin and Kamenica.

In 1945 there was only 19.710 dwellings in Novi Sad and 11.000 of them had just one room among 1.000 of them was inappropriate for living. In analyzed period of 30 years 41220 apartments was built in Novi Sad: during the first and second decade more than 14.000 were completed, and in the third decade around 12.000. In the next ten-year period (1990 – 1999) only 4.617 apartments were built. Both large panel and skeleton system building construction method were applied. According to positive technical regulation at the building period, the quality of insulation [8], [9], [11], and infrastructure[12] is various: from very poor at late 50’s to pretty well at late 80’s. Fire safety is one of the major problems, regarding high residential buildings origin from this building period[14], [15].

Most of built structures look similar, although the floor layout and flats were often planed at satisfactory level (kitchen with separated storage and dining, connected to living room with balcony, very often two bathrooms in flats containing more than one bedroom, or separated toilet from bathroom, quite night-part of apartment with it’s one hall and storage, bedrooms with balcony, etc.).

Urban planning was done in simple way, using simple geometric forms and flat roofs. Very rarely facades were colored, most of them considers the “beton-brut” appearance . Every apartment, except some at the ground floor, was planned with balcony or logia, with reach fenestration also. Apartments at the ground floor, built in 80’s, orientated at inner block-space, have their own garden. Illegal building phenomena had skipped those city areas[16], only small adjustments were made by individual tenants (interventions at balcony or logia in order to expand the interior space by closing them).

More than 67.000 residents of Novi Sad live in 23.600 flats built in industrial way. Average flat unit in Novi Sad’s LHE is 57m2 large, 20 m2 per tenant.

Local Agenda 21 (2001) [19] proposes conceptual lines for improving sustainable city development, examining the possibilities of ecological building and reconstruction of built environment. Those principles are also incorporated in the last officially urban development plan, but there is no funds to start any real action.

3 CONCLUSIONS

A multi-residential building as a home for several families and also as the ancient expression of a man’s need for community, socialization and communication through collective housing and, at the same time, each

apartment as a specific intimate interior are modeled by multifold forces and influences from the outside and by the inside identity originating from each individual itself, either as a creator or a user.

The huge number of flats, made in industrial way, need a special care from government, politicians, architects and urban designers. The energy performance and environment conscious solution is the major part of sustainability issues. Architectural, cultural and social questions have to be considered also, and final solutions have to be acceptable to residents and the settlements. The expensive skeleton of buildings and infrastructure with high embodied energy must be used in new way, to offer better life quality for all the users and to low the costs for tenants and community.

4 REFERENCES

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