Garten Studio Ltd. was established in 1995, by five landscape architects. In the beginning, our profile was landscape architecture, design and construction works too. Nowadays, the bureau consists of 24 designers. Our main profile is landscape architecture: design and environmental planning.
MOTIVATION
As landscape architects our goal is to find the potentials of a site. We have to explore and understand the spatial complexity, to find the right answers. But, of course, there isn’t an absolute answer. The result will depend on the designer’s attitude, style and perception. Individual visions reveal themselves at each task, independently from the simplicity of the situation. Our approach is to achieve the unity of the built and the natural environment with respect for the heritage, propagating innovation and insistence on quality. Behind our work, there is always our intent, to make improvements for the community, as well as, the desire to express ourselves and to create value.
METHODS AND PROJECTS
We are working on projects with various scale and cultural environment, sometimes as general designer or under other partner disciplines. During the 25 years of practice we always tried to represent the infinite tools of landscape architecture. There is always a better solution for being environmentally friendly or to create better place for our living building materials, such as plants. The other main aspect that there is no small project. Any project can be great, if it finds the right landscape architect who understans it.
’GREEN’ TODAY
Our current responsibility is to use out the attention around ’green’ topics and turn this power into human focused, eco friendly city environment. If our extracting process is successful, the result will be quality public spaces, which become important scene of social life – good cases identify good spots in cityscape. Landscape architecture gets lots of cosmopolitan inputs in this theme, which can be transformed into positive local outputs, in case of understanding the essence of the good examples and add the extra knowledge of your surroundings.
CROWN PARK SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR – HYSTORICAL PLAYGROUND
The town of Székesfehérvár was established by High Prince Géza in 972, while his son St. Stephan, the first king of Hungary granted town rights to it. The settlement reached its main importance during the medieval period, it was the royal seat for hundreds of years, 38 kings were crowned here, the last one in 1526.
Concept of the thematic playground: one of the city’s under-utilized public park turned into a historical thematic playground. That gives the benefit of making a playground in an afforested environment. The aim of creating the Crown Park was to demonstrate the local and the Hungarian history through the habits of the population in various historical ages, and to pass this knowledge to the little ones in an experimental way.
Apart from the traditional playground activities, a kinect game corner, roleplaying games of the medieval times, theatre performances, costume shows enrich the possibilities of the park. Signs of information about the historical sights, medieval maps and pictures lead the visitor along the path of the designed topics: village, swamp, forest skill park, castle, joust, coronation hump, labyrinth. Both the figural elements of the rubber surfaces and the type of the playing equipements testify the actual topic. Most of the equipments made of black locust tree in rustic style. The carved elements were made by Ilona Malom Műhely, while the debarked acacia playground equipements were delivered by Hriste.
KOPASZI DAM, LÁGYMÁNYOS – BAY REVITALIZATION
The increasing good examples grow the clients’ demand for a quality environment, and drive the designers’ constant renewal. The competitive spirit of something new, different and better may give an upturn to modern landscaping and coupled with responsibility this may really serve the good of community. Kopaszi dike is certainly such a project in forming community spaces on the Danube bank. This subject keeps arising as there is a strong wish to do something with the Danube bank, either based on a broad concept or at certain points — everyone according to his wish and capabilities. In case of Lágymányosi bay, it was a local project; the wish and the opportunity came from an investor. By its novelty and diversity, the riverside park became one of the high-priority recreational community and meeting places of Budapest. Awards: Budapest Architectural Award for Excellence, Special Prize of the Jury of the Hungarian Real Estate Development Award for Excellence, Pro Architectura prize.
MILL PARK OFFICE BUILDING
Preparing the concept of this office garden as an outdoor community space our main design aspect was to create high-standard built and green environment linked to the function of the office building. We wanted to create clear style and spatial structure, varied places for relaxation and sitting around for small or bigger groups of people at several places of the garden: outdoor terrace for the restaurant, outdoor auditorium, little sport area, intimate swings or little pavilions as hideaways. After the right functional order was found the design process of this garden was very close to the profound of interior design, from choosing the ’floor’ materials, collecting the right furnitures and plants.
The internal garden aims to give a clear, spatial structure which reflects to the design of the building. For the areas close to the building, we have planned a more built environment. Moving away from the building, green surfaces become increasingly dominant, and there are less built elements and pavements. Along the long internal facade a paved walkway is left free following also the turning of building wings. Closer to the facade, a green belt is formed. This green belt is divided by pedestrian walkways leading towards the garden. The planted patterns were filled with groundcover plants, and designed with smaller terrain plastics.
Investors had an approach to establish a sustainable building environment so the garden was designed according the requirements of LEED.
photo credit: Attila Glázer
RECONSTRUCTION OF VÁRKERT BAZÁR – BUDA CASTLE
The rich historical heritage that goes back to the Middle Ages and its frequented position in the city give the speciality of Várkert Bazár and Ybl Miklós square. Várkert Bazár was built in the end of 19th century in Neo-Renaissance style according to the plans of Ybl Miklós architect. It was planned for closing the Castle Gardens toward river Danube and had representational purposes. Once magnificent flower-gardens, fountains, grotto and beautiful plants belonged to the complex. The garden was completely destroyed by World War II. The building had been restored after the war and it gave place for the legendary Youth Park until 1984. Over the past thirty years the complex were running down without utilization and it become one of the hundred most endangered monuments of the world. It was reconstructed according to remaining plans and photographs in 2014 to shine again on its old glory. Today it gives place for mainly cultural and service functions, and it has been completed with underground constructions of multifunctional hall, multi-level parking garage and organization spaces. The historical reconstruction of the Neo-Renaissance Garden and the contemporary Öntőház court is significant from landscape architecture point of view. Ybl Miklós square, as the foreground of the Várbazár has also been renewed. The complete reconstruction has been managed with great respect towards architectural heritage.
VÁROSLIGET PUBLIC PARK – BUDAPEST
The design site possesses an outstanding historical importance, thus the work began with the inventory review of the past heritage.
Városliget is the first public park in the world, which Budapest established at its own expense about 200 years ago.
Based on the master plan of Henrik Nebbien, who won the design competition with an unparalleled precision at that time, the park still preserves the essential elements of the original concept.
Preparing for the application of the competition we undertook the task, that we create a complex family-friendly, cultural and leisure park within the framework of Liget Budapest Project.
However, significant landscaping interventions are also required to achieve the balance, on the one hand they compensate the reservation of the built-up area, on the other hand they create and identify such well-defined units, which definitely separate from the immediate surroundings of the new cultural zones, independent of their connection system.
The appearance of the historical layer, emphasizing is not a pulling force against the development, but specifically and primarily this can make the park an internationally attractive tourist destination.
The depressing state of the park is also an opportunity to fundamentally renew and clear its spatial structure. Almost the one third of the park is under construction, while some renewed, smaller parts are already in use. Soon we’ll see the pure, original structure of the Liget.
