In the 1990s, renewed attention was focussed on city centres – a welcome development after decades in which attention had been concentrated on designing urban expansion areas and rehabilitating nineteenth-century urban districts. Bureau B+B had itself set the new trend with the ‘De Kern Gezond’ project for the city centre of The Hague. In the following years, the firm was approached by several cities, with high expectations for the added value to be realized with an attractive public space. In Breda, the firm worked on a new concept for the centre’s shopping district and the renovation of its main city park, Valkenberg Park. These two largescale projects formed part of the structural plan for the city centre adopted by the municipality in 1992. Bureau B+B, now armed with substantial experience with city centres, wrote in 1995: ‘There is always one central question: What are the city’s qualities and how can these be strengthened? And at the same time, it must be borne in mind that it is not the task of the city to respond well to whatever treatment one applies to it, but rather, that the designer must be willing to do something that the city is up to.’ For the shopping district, the office took as our point of departure the ambiance of a historic town with the convivial and hospitable character typical of the Netherlands’ southern provinces.
Valkenberg Park however needed a different approach. Valkenberg Park as for a long period of time part of the route daily trod by train travellers from the station to the city centre. But over time, the old urban park in the English landscape style, had become overgrown and unsafe. Many residents of the city avoided the park. In redesigning the park, its existing strengths were used as starting points: its rich history, historic trees, characteristic height differences and large bordering river. The original character of the park, which had become overgrown was again made visible by means of a drastic cleanup and simplification programme, without applying a purely historicizing approach. The characteristic system park paths were supplemented with two broad main paths in asphalt, suitable for walking, cycling or roller skating. This was done to improve the connection between train station and city centre.
New elements were a sandbox in an oval-shaped terrazzo-dish, a modern restaurant/catering pavilion and specially designed lighting elements, while the original location of a seventeenth-century castle garden once at this site was memorialized with a new boxwood garden. Attention to detail lent the park the flair that had been so absent: for example, the striking bluestone seating rim of the sunken baroque garden, or the paving stones specially developed to emphasize the bent line of the pond rim. The park has developed into a tranquil location in the middle of the city centra of Breda, into which the sound of the city pleasantly penetrates. It became a destination again. In 1994, the Ministry for Housing, Regional Development and the Environment (VROM) praised the result, by declaring Valkenberg Park an exemplary public space plan. Fifteen years later, in 2010, the park was nominated as public space of the year.
And just over 30 years later, in 2025, the park has become a well-loved destination for Breda. A truly democratic space visited by people from all age groups and backgrounds. This project shows that a drastic clean-up for urban green projects – although it might hurt at the time – is worth the effort and initial pain. It also shows that historic parks do not need to be restored according to a historic image or ‘frozen in time’, an attitude many cities and historians still struggle with. Parks are living entities that change over time, and if we truly believe this, it opens ways to creatively interpret and integrate historic elements and create a timeless piece of living urban space at the same time. Historic city parks can be renovated successfully by allowing new design structures to flourish and find their place, while overcoming spatial and social issues by being bold, clear and poetic.
• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
Bureau B+B Urbanism and Landscape Architecture
• All architecture offices involved in the design: Park pavilion by John Körmeling
