The heart of the project is the green valley, a unique public landscape. Its impressive size, its richness of habitats, and its connection to Budapest’s green corridor-network upgrade the notion of a park to a public a green valley through which the rail tracks flow like a river.

The specific configuration establishes a synergy between high density and porosity with a strong relation to the green valley.

Moreover, the porous edge opens up the parkview for the buildings in the back. The combination of diverse morpho-typologies, varying building heights, and their relationship with public space, together with active mobility routes, enables constantly shifting visual perspectives and creates a choreography between the user and the landscape.

A series of landscape operations are proposed to be progressively activated alongside the project phases. Interventions are confined to paths and service corridors, preserving the forest core, soil and understorey continuity, and limiting fragmentation and edge effects. This controlled and adaaptive approach safeguards ecological processes while reinforcing connectivity, forest structure, and long-term ecosystem resilience.

Ecological Regeneration
Budapest is embedded in a diverse territorial mosaic of parks and open spaces, encompassing a gradient of habitats from dry areas to wetlands. In contrast, the project site currently presents a homogeneous ecological structure shaped by spontaneous recolonisation. The proposal promotes ecological regeneration by accelerating ecological succession, enhancing biodiversity and resilience, and reinterpreting a valley section through the hybridisation of green and blue infrastructure, with water acting as the landscape’s structuring element.

In line with the northwesterly wind direction characteristic of the area, the buildings are spaced out to allow for ventilation, so that the entire development area is naturally ventilated. This effectively mitigates warming and prevents the urban heat island effect.

Transforming post-industrial territories of low biodiversity into large-scale public parks requires conceiving the landscape as a living biological infrastructure, rather than a mere visual backdrop. Through “large-scale agriculture” techniques, soils are engineered using recycled materials and dredged sediments, and pioneer species are planted to prepare the ground for self-sustaining, complex ecosystems over time.

From day one, the park exists, yet it evolves gradually, gaining ecological complexity, generating connected biological corridors, and forming a resilient ecological unit in the face of climate change. Time becomes a design layer: the park of today will not be the same in 20 years, allowing nature to colonise and transform the site, weaving its own ecological dynamics.

The essence of the mobility concept is to exclude car traffic from the area entirely and to develop a sustainable system based on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transport. Car and public transport will be restricted to the public roads on the edges (Tatai út, Szomszéd utca, Komáromi út), and their development (M1 metro, tram, trolleybus, bus, cycle paths, P+R car parks) will be aligned with the pace of the implementation.

The magic underpass solves the Gordian knot. It creates a multilink that overcomes all hurdles and establishes a comfortable, barrier-free pedestrian- and bicycle link across the heavy traffic barriers, linking Városliget with Herminamezö and Rákosrendezö. Moreover, the underpass creates barrier-free access to all public transport stops along its course– tramway, M1 and the trains at Városliget station. Top lights, inviting entrances, and a generous spatial layout, with a valuable surface design, make the underpass an attractive public passage. With the magic underpass, Budapest finally achieves its long-awaited public shortcut.

The essence of the mobility concept is to exclude car traffic from the area entirely and to develop a sustainable system based on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transport. Car and public transport will be restricted to the public roads on the edges (Tatai út, Szomszéd utca, Komáromi út), and their development (M1 metro, tram, trolleybus, bus, cycle paths, P+R car parks) will be aligned with the pace of the implementation.

Public squares, liberated from motorized drive-through traffic, structure the neighbourhoods, with amenities for both everyday and district-scale needs woven throughout the development. On the west side, a pearl chain of squares is formed, seamlessly connected and lined with district-scale commercial uses at ground level. On the east side, a sequence of smaller neighbourhood pockets along the new Szomszéd-road accommodate daily services and local activities.

Rather than an iconic building, the new station is an iconic program under an elegantly suspended roof: a living public bridge that connects the two main squares of the new urban centre. Kiosks animate the upper level, and a generous landscaped stair. The 2 station buildings (railway in the west, M1 in the east) anchor the bridge on the ground.

The square offers a significant entrée from the station into the new neighbourhoods.

A mix of everyday supplies, civic services, shopping facilities, gastronomy and other services create a vital 24/7 public square. The library’s comprehensive program infiltrates different buildings. Its exposed book-cube gives the square a charming and open-hearted character.

Our smart urban block system builds on the strongest traditions of classical inner-city block logic, while integrating lessons learned from late 20th-century housing models. It establishes a spatial pattern that balances intimacy with porosity.

All housing units are closely connected to either the large urban-scale park or semi-private green spaces. This permeability ensures continuous visual connections and easy access to this enhanced environmental quality.

Each housing cluster is organised around a permeable semi-private green space that supports functionality and daily activities at multiple scales. The dwellings grouped around each courtyard form development- and community-level units, incorporating shareda spaces while also integrating water management and energy systems.
picture: studioboden

The porous arrangement of the blocks fosters a strong sense of openness. Even with a high building density, the environment feels comfortable rather than crowded. This design supports continuous airflow throughout the urban fabric, enhancing natural ventilation, providing cooling during summer, and helping mitigate the urban heat island effect.

The regeneration of Kapagyár is a pioneering role model for a resilient urban transformation. It becomes an island that is embedded in the green valley to which it has an intense and multilayered relationship:

The heritage of the open linear structure allows the landscape to charmingly infiltrate the island.

The reuse of existing buildings contributes to a promising place-making, establishing a sensitive dialogue with new buildings whose scale and typology refer to Kapagyár’s heritage.

Sustainable programming underlines the project’s social and ecological commitment: landscape factory, local park-management, reuse center, forest school, bio-labs, co-housing and co-gardening models with pertinent market-activities establish an ambitious mix of complementary uses.

The upcycled industrial heritage is embedded in a landscape-incubator site. The postindustrial landscape is transformed step-by-step into valuable habitats - wet and dry forests, meadows and lakes, also serving high value recreational open spaces. The incubator’s heart is the Landscape Factory focusing on research and practice, experiencing new and innovative methods in urban green space development, edible plant production and habitat regeneration techniques. Kapagyár is also a sample area to showcase the sponge city tools as a network to reuse and upcycle rainwater and greywater of buildings. The tasty layer is the network of outdoor and indoor urban farming areas as well as the experimental use of edible plants in public and semi public open spaces, providing a base for the farm-to-fork concept. The factory’s experiences and techniques can be transferred and upscaled to the wider Rákosrendező area and other urban landscapes of Budapest. Knowledge transfer to the wider public operates in community gardening sites, the forest school and the biodiversity playground.

Budapest is embedded in a diverse territorial mosaic of parks and open spaces, encompassing a gradient of habitats from dry areas to wetlands. In contrast, the project site currently presents a homogeneous ecological structure shaped by spontaneous recolonisation. The proposal promotes ecological regeneration by accelerating ecological succession, enhancing biodiversity and resilience, and reinterpreting a valley section through the hybridisation of green and blue infrastructure, with water acting as the landscape’s structuring element.