The outward shape of many European cities changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. In urban expansion areas, large-scale housing estates with modern, well-appointed flats were erected since the mid-1950s. “Good and more attractive housing, good and improved household management” (Oskar & Peter Payer) – that was the objective of the 1960s, both in Vienna and Bratislava. Industrialised and standardised housing production was to eliminate the housing shortage and improve both the quality of housing and the quality of life for the population at large. Large-panel construction seemed a highly economical and efficient construction technique to make these technical and social visions reality. In the 1960s, a well-appointed private flat in a prefabricated building became the symbol of a high standard of housing and living in many countries. The large-panel housing estates in Bratislava corresponded to the ideas of socialist housing and urbanistic policies that were to enhance the quality of life and housing for the “new socialist humankind“. The architectural and urbanistic concepts of interwar International Style modernism were combined with the rapid evolution of industrial mass construction technologies to attain this goal.

Ever since their emergence, prefabricated housing estates were subject to growing criticism. Gradually, technological concepts began to displace urbanistic, architectural and cultural ones. “Ultimately, it was the cranes that decided the shape of housing estates“ ( Jirí Musil). Since that time, structural defects as well as social and societal problems are considered concomitant attributes of large-panel estates and thus have contributed to their negative image. Hence the central question must be: to what extent do the prefabricated housing estates of the 1960s to 1980s, which after all were constructed for a society that no longer exists, still meet the requirements of contemporary housing? How is the quality of housing and life in a prefabricated housing estate built in those decades viewed today?