Millenium Park

name of work: Millenium Park
location: Budapest
year of design/realization: 2001
award: Europa Nostra (2002)
landscape architects: Árpád Kovács, Gábor Lendvai, Johanna Muszbek, Péter Pozsár, Dominika Tihanyi, Krisztina Wallner
architects: CÉH Zrt.
contractor: Harkai és Társa Ltd.

The Millenary Park is the result of a brown field development in the center of Buda, on the site of the former Ganz factory, built between 1844 and 1912. By 1989, after the closing of the Ganz Works, the site was surrounded by the dense residential areas of Buda center and the rehabilitation of the area became inevitable.

Bird's-eye view

Grape yard

After demolishing of more than 70% of the buildings, the space for a new exhibition and events center and a new public park was created on the occasion of the Hungarian Millennium. The concept of the park is based on the notion: creating. The park itself is designed upon the temporal process of creation divided into two parts. The first stands for motivation and the second for interaction. Inthe motivational part you find yourself surrounded by normal urban and naturalenvironment but in a totally unusual form. Leaving the motivational part you reach the interactive space, the playground ofcreativity. The elements in the park such as hill lines and grass benches are not defined exactly by means of usage. It is not function but notion that defines them and the spaces of the park.

The possibility of use lies in the hand of the visitor where he is able to mould the space to conform to his needs. Here you can find environmental elements in mobile form, and areinvited to create your own actual surrounding. The glass corridor holds the key message of the park. From within we see our surroundings like looking at an artwork behind glass in a museum. Cut away from and viewing the surroundings from a glass corridor aimed to draw attention to our responsibility to take part in shaping our lives and our future environment, as being our democratic right to do so.

Masterplan

Grass benches

Wheat field

Glass corridor

Glass corridor

Wheat field

Grass benches

Grass benches

Waterfall

Intimate spaces

Intimate spaces

Tress in the lake

Moveable park elements