Index – Culture – Instead of a square, it has become a public park, can you stay?

In big cities, it is not often that a new park is built, and that is not what we have seen here. We prefer to call the park a lawn stretched between the new housing blocks, which later functioned as pastures for pug, or benches carved around the city trees, which are later inaugurated as a “coveted oasis of concrete forests.”

The fact that in Budapest, from a ground zero in a former clean factory area, Széll Kálmán tér, a park is thrown out of nowhere, at a point of the city already densely populated with squares, is in itself a development to that one arrives.

Wind Gate is called a recreational park, which means that we can relax and recharge in such a green environment. While in many parts of the world people are incredibly laid back when it comes to sitting on the grass for an urban picnic, at home we just prefer to learn this genre.

The new park, for its part, is an ideal place to practice from the first impressions, which were assumed in the first days by those who were on vacation, high school students in the area and families with young children. The city has long seen so many loungers released, looking at the lake and shaking in the grass.

This also required the park to be clearly green at the time of delivery. Fortunately, in the new park you can walk among not thin trees and the promise of many years of “lush greenery”.

Most parts of the Wind Gate provide a dense and compact green experience and there is something to marvel at the plant offerings. The hanging garden, for example, does not appear out of nowhere, but in front of it a mini forest was built, with parts suitable for relaxing and providing shade. The rainy and later sunny weather in early summer certainly added a lot to this, but designers need to highlight it. (architecture: TSPC Mérnökiroda Kft., landscape architecture: 4D Landscape Architect Office, garden construction: Parkertech Kft.) his work, which hid an architectural or landscape poem for each square meter of the park and filled as many green spaces as possible in the mountainous park, which was moved in three dimensions.

The most spectacular element of this is the huge steel structure densely covered with moving plants, which beneficially covers the side wall of Mammut number two and increases the green area of ​​the area by many thousands of square meters (the amber must grow to the max! discreet red inscription of Mammut!).

The steel frame, made even more spectacular by the panoramic elevator and the gazebo, is also the largest hanging garden in Central Europe, a walkable green bridge between the two millennia.

In the middle of the park there are three solar panels in a shape that we are not used to. That’s probably the point too – aside from the fact that the weird mushroom-shaped structures that also function as lamps and curtains generate electricity, they look good, before even a medium-sized phone can take enough Insta-compatible photos. We leave the analysis of longer-term energy relationships to the physics teachers, but the electricity from the solar panels is definitely enough to help power the park.

Families with young children will probably not be captivated by the spectacular contemporary architectural elements, even more so by the playground, which includes a very exciting moving cable car surrounded by flowers; it’s definitely a refreshment compared to most of the Budapest fury.

On the bright side, playground designers also drew a parent’s swing in the middle of the cable climber – this is the kind of swing parents can enjoy with impunity without being seen as stupid by passersby in the area.

The project in numbers

• 35 thousand square meters of area,
• 355 trees, 25 thousand bushes,
• 4000 square meters of vertical green area,
• 850 square meters of playground,
• 3 huge design solar panels,
• 1 lake,
• 1 water lily
• 0 goldfish,
• 1 underground garage.

For the latter, it is worth stopping separately for the duration of a sentence. As long as locals drive, and many are currently driving, this underground garage could be the key to making parked cars disappear from the surface. To do this, let’s say, the municipality also needs to eliminate as many surface parking spaces as possible, transforming them into terraces, cafes and small parks.

If there is only one good thing to note about the park, it is that it is not boring, in fact, it has been a lot of fun: it bends, smaller hills come, meandering walks, amazing plants appear at every corner. Relaxation starts somewhere with this variety, and the details come with a heavy dose of modern architecture with solar panels and a hanging garden.

Was it worth building a park in the middle of Buda instead of a square?

Hundreds of new trees and many thousands of square meters of green space have been replaced by an old abandoned industrial site and a strong and meaningful unity has been created with the Millenáris and the Dance Theater.

The future of Wind Gate is now in the hands of the operators – we will do well if at least this area avoids stagnation, mass so-called family events, Christmas fairs that start in late October, beer tent painting moments and keep what was built: a park.