Ugly Buildings: Reflections on the Reconstructivist Trend in Central and Eastern Europe

The late modernist architectural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe has undergone a peculiar transformation in the last couple of years. I consider this transformation from the perspective of the taming of ugly late modernist buildings into harmless miniatures as embedded in the grander phenomenon of architectural reconstructivism, concomitant with the demolition of late modernist building stock. This article aims to explore the current trend for reconstructivism in architecture by applying a two-fold conceptual framework, projection as a discursive method and Mark Cousins’s theory of ugliness to inspect the interwovenness of diverse socio-cultural factors by unraveling the manifold ways in which late modernist architectures are perceived with unease and discomfort in post-socialist contexts. These hyoptheses are tested in the case of the Electrical Power Distribution Station by architect Csaba Virág in Budapest.