Rákosrendező masterplan

The site is located behind Városliget, in an area of outstanding importance within Budapest’s urban fabric. The opportunity for its reorganisation arose with the reduction of railway traffic. The first approaches, proposing high-rise developments, were met with a negative response both from local residents and from the city leadership. The plan presented here shows our proposal prepared jointly with BIG for an international design competition launched on the basis of a developer’s intention to introduce a different kind of use for the area.
The aim was to create a model district that could serve as an example in the coming decades for providing homes for those social groups that had moved out to the agglomeration and are now expected to return to the city. However, neither the excellent location nor the significant size of the site could obscure the fact that the railway would continue to pass through it, albeit on a smaller scale. One of the major challenges of the design was addressing this condition.
In our proposal, we designed a continuous, undulating green system along the railway, complemented by a network of overpasses and underpasses connecting the two sides of the railway, formed by road, water — the Rákos Stream — and green elements running along its line. The scale of the proposed buildings is relatively low, and instead of relying on height, we created the volume required by the brief by also using the characteristic perimeter-block structure of Budapest’s urban fabric. Even so, the proportion of green areas remains more akin to that of a small-town environment.
We paid particular attention to infrastructure and basic services, as well as accommodating existing and future cultural uses. The intermodal hub emerging at the meeting point of the extended Millennium Underground line, Hungária Boulevard and the railway can also effectively serve both urban and suburban transfers.
We had the opportunity to prepare the competition entry together with the world-renowned Danish practice BIG, which brought many valuable experiences. Although we did not win the competition, our relationship — which had already been established through our winningjoint competition for the Hungarian Natural History Museum — was further deepened through this present collaboration, which was a great pleasure for us.