FEMA shopping centre

The FEMA shopping centre was built in the years of the regime change as the Hungarian pioneer of suburban shopping centres, and is still a rarity in terms of its high-standard architectural design. The complex bears the signs of organic style on the outside as well as on the inside, and is divided into two parts: the half-round part looking over the junction of motorways accommodates a supermarket, while the passage joining it with a dome-roofed space hosts smaller shops. At the time of its construction it was planned to be ‘the first drive-in shopping centre of Hungar’ that accommodates ‘state-owned trade as well as private commerce, private manufactures, bars, foreign currency shops and money exchange offices’, in the investor’s words, in accordance with the highest expectations of the eighties. The heyday of the FEMA was in the next decade, owing to shoppers from the neighbouring South Slavic countries, but as the demand declined, it was shut down for five years at the time of the millennium. Today it is primarily a commercial centre serving the nearby older and more recent residential areas; and the originally planned motel was never constructed.