Csepely-Knorr Luca: Barren Places to Public Spaces. A History of Publick Park Design in Budapest 1867-1914 (Budapest, 2016)
Public Park design in Budapest during the second half of the 19th Century
The development of Szabadság Square The creation of todays Szabadság Square on the site of the enormous late-18th century barracks, the so-called ‘Neugebaude’ (Újépület or New Building), was the major piece of city redevelopment of the 1890s, excepting the regulation plans to create the new Erzsébet Bridge. Several design competitions were announced for the creation of the new square, and lively debates accompanied the competitions. The first competition was announced in 1891 by the Union of Hungarian Architects and Engineers. It attracted 52 entries, among them four by the architects and engineers of the Board of Public Works and eight by the designers of the municipality. However, none of the designs fulfilled all the aims, and the square and the built environment around it were constantly redesigned.320 In 1894 a new Act enabled the Neugebaude to be demolished, and although a final layout had not been decided upon, in the professional journals new ideas and plans appeared one after the other.321 In 1895, a new competition was announced, based on the recommendations of Zsigmond Quittner.322 Antal Palóczi was awarded second prize in this round, but his plans were not chosen to be realized. Nevertheless, the architect published several plans in the journal Építő Ipar. The main objective in his designs was to create a central green area which was as large as possible. His views on the functions of urban squares were very forward-thinking, too. In one of his first published designs, he recommended the creation of two separate public parks and an ornamental garden.323 He endorsed the establishment of a restaurant in one park unit, and a childrens play-area and glasshouse in the other. In 1897, he redesigned the plan using the two winning entries from the competition two years before. He also published his idea of the creation of the maximum possible park area.324 According to the designs, the area was supposed to serve as an infrastructural area, park and promenade at the same time, besides leaving space for a monument. Palóczi thought that so many functions could not be placed there at the same time, therefore he recommended a monumental, architectural square in this proposal, without using landscape Prize-winning entry by Antal Palóczi for the competition announced by the Union of Hungarian Architects and Engineers in 1891 for the development of the site of Neugebäude / MMÊEK, 1892. p. 294. / ADT architecture. In the same year, he published his final design.32S In this plan, he returned to the idea of an immense green area in the central part of the square, which is only cut by the most important infrastructural elements. He kept the whole of the former Széchenyi Promenade, and situated the main green area perpendicular to this, with a semi-circular ending, leaving the envisaged Statue of Liberty as the focal point. The statue was placed at the crossing of the streets linking the square with the surrounding urban areas, and as such did not interrupt the traffic. The ambitious plan was further enriched by the arcades around the main open space, linking the green areas with the built environment. In his theoretical writing published in 1903 “A városok rendezése Budapest viszonyainak egybevetésével” (The redevelopment of cities in relation to the situation in Budapest) Palóczi emphasised that the monumentality of an open space can be further enriched by the juxtaposition of a rectangular space with a semi-circular one, especially if the latter is highlighted with a monument.32'1 Using this model, traffic squares could be turned into architectural squares, and he gives his own plan for Szabadság Square as an example. In Palóczi’s impressive layout the main axis, which gave the view to the Liberty Statue, was further emphasised with avenues of six rows of trees and a fountain. Between the avenues and the buildings, quite large green areas could be retained - compared to the typical situation in Budapest. The crucial element of his plan, and his writings, was the desire to create various formal approaches to the variety of functions, and in addition that the placing of the buildings was subordinate to the idea of a sizable green space. The final layout was based on Palóczi s last plan, and it was designed by the Board of Public Works. The final landscape plans were signed by Keresztély Ilsemann. According to Gábor Preisich, Palóczi’s original plans would have given the opportunity to create the "most harmonious square of the turn of the century", but it couldn’t happen because of the lack of a unified facade system.327 Nevertheless, Szabadság Square is one of the very few examples at the turn of the 20th century in Budapest, when the architectural and landscape elements were created together in harmony. Regulation plan for the site of Neugebäude based on the results of the 1892 competition / A Magyar Mérnök- és Építész-Egylet Közlönye, 1904. p. 426. / ADT Previous page: Szabadság Square with the dome of the Parliament Building in the background on a 1930s postcard / HU BFL XV. 19.d.2.c 91 103
