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GELLÉRT HILL
urban and landscape design
competition proposal
Budapest, Hungary, 2016
team:
GUBAHÁMORI (Sándor Guba, Péter Hámori)
Imre Bokányi - architect
Hajnalka Tarr - visual artist
If the whole area of Gellért Hill was flat, this UNESCO World Heritage Site would be the most visited and popular green area in the heart of Budapest, where friends have barbecue at the weekends or families jump in on the way home from kindergarten; a place where the elderly could possibly spend their active and passive recreation time, disabled people could get close to accessible nature, musicians would be jamming and people could start the day here with yoga. The only problem is that this hill, in the past 5-6 decades, became more like an enclosure, a dead exhibit only visited by tourists, than a lively urban space for local citizens.
Restructuring the hill’s landscape, that the invasive species lately turned into a shapeless green mass, would create unique experiences for the pedestrians. Besides the usual urban body culture sets and furnitures (places for relaxing, walking, running, dancing, playgrounds, balance activities, etc.), religious installations (White Heart Pilgrimage Route, Calvary, outdoor activities in front of the Cave Chapel) and the already existing educational trails, a new infrastructure of parks, planted with multisensory vegetation, would be served with widely accessible paths and roads. It is utterly important that a 21st-century urban park is also ought to serve people in wheelchairs, blind and visually impaired or autistic people.
