Demolition as a brutal intervention over the past: the former MVM electric power station by Csaba Virág in the historical Buda Castle district, Budapest.

The socialist leadership after WWII promoted large-scale reconstruction works of many bomb sites in Budapest, such as the Power Station designed by Csaba Virág and built in 1979, an outstanding building of its time and a document of the modernist period, no matter its “invasive” character in the medieval surroundings. On the contrary, for many aspects this “machine” pointing towards future’s modernity remained respectful of the historical environment, regardless of its brutalism. The wise placement of the mass on a contradictory plot, the reflecting façade connecting the historical surroundings to the modernist interior, the tower element evoking the spire structures of the district and all the high-tech standardized details made this building an exceptional element inside the medieval urban fabric. But after the function was moved out from the Castle District in 2007, the building was abandoned. This caused several deteriorations on the non-maintained facade and a total functional decline. Highly growing antipathy and public rejection towards the neglected Power Station made its demolition possible for local Municipality, so to replace it by a conservative building which recreates the same walled structure system of historic houses in the bailey. Thus, by 2020 only the original basement and staircase elements of Virág’s building survived. The traditionalist attitude from the government shows how radically they want to recreate a fake historical architectural image of the castle district, by permanently deleting the evidence of recent history and the hidden significance behind modernist architectural language.