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
which is probably the most frequently quoted and influential design, done by Adolphe Alphand and Edouard André. The park was created on a new site in a new residential area, there were no previous plantations, and it was meant to be a public park from the beginning. The Irish gardener and horticultural expert William Robinson, a leading figure in turn of the century British landscape design, called the park the "most distinct and interesting garden in Paris”.4'1 The park was built between 1864 and 1869 on the site of a former clay mine. The mine had very bad soil but very interesting differences in level, which was used very successfully by the designers. The large lake was fed by the St Martin canal, and in the centre of it a major rocky formation was placed, with a rotunda inspired by the Temple of Sibyl (or Temple of Vesta) in Tivoli. On the former site of the mine itself, the designers created a grotto, major waterfalls and artificial rocks. Robinson, when describing the park, mentioned that the creators used alpine plants around the rocks, which was not a good decision for climatological reasons.413 Nevertheless, the design decision to plant certain details in the park with plants representative of the country’s indigenous flora, became crucial by the turn of the 20th century. The designers of the - related to Népliget Park - already-mentioned Türkenschanzpark in Vienna used a similar idea: to model typical landscapes of the Alps by using the various forms of water and native plants. A third important European public park, worth mentioning as a parallel, was Viktoriapark in Berlin. It is similar to the Budapest example from both the point of view of urban design and landscape architecture. It Buttes-Chaumont Park, Paris, shown from above / Adolphe Alphand, Les Promenades de Paris. Párizs, 1867-1873 / BME-OMIKK Buttes-Chaumont Park, Paris, view of the cliffs of the island /Adolphe Alphand, Les Promenades de Paris. Párizs, 1867-1873 / BME-OMIKK 136
