Artemisia Landscape Design

Metro project, Budapest Bank Headquarters

Client: GTC Hungary

Site: Metro project, Budapest Bank Headquarters The site is the rear garden of the GTC Metro project, a Zoltan Tima-designed building featuring a cor-ten steel exterior and about 17,000 square meters of office, retail and storage space. The client primarily wants to use the rear garden as a place for employees to relax.

What we did:

Architecture and landscape architecture must be organically connected in order for a site to function as a whole unit. But the nature of that connection can take an infinite number of forms. The garden can be the open-air continuation of the architecture, a visual echo reflecting its spirit, contours and materials. Or landscape connects to architecture by being its harmonious counterpoint. It is the latter approach that I have chosen for this site. The building is bold and vibrant, exuding purpose and meant to be an inspiring, energizing workspace.

Its garden will be the locus of calm and reconnection with nature. The word “reconnection” refers in part to the building’s occupants, who can use the garden as a place to recharge and reenergize. But it also implies a larger reconnection -- with the original landscape of the site. From the ground level, it is easy to forget that it lies less than 200 meters from the rich ecosystem and sublime beauty of the Danube.

The design uses natural, simple forms in a scale appropriate to the building -- yet still meeting the ideal of nature reduced to the human scale. It is meant to provide a calm environment for the physical, mental, emotional, and social restoration of its users, suitable for either solitary contemplation or group gatherings.

The garden consists entirely of trees, mixed shrubs in natural hedging, and a lower story of mixed perennials, herbs and ornamental grass. The plantings are arranged in a layout that provides easily both for solitude or for group gatherings.

Its forms are simple, modern and bold, fully in proportion and harmony with those of the building. Its effect is natural but still acknowledges the building’s very urban setting and style.

Yet, it balances the vibrancy of the working environment by providing a soft, intuitive note to the architecture.