Innovative project of a botanical garden in Lublin dating back to 1964, by Oskar and Zofia Hansen

Joanna Dudek-Klimiuk

doi:10.5277/arc150104

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the little known idea of managing the Botanical Garden in Lublin, drawn up in the 1960s by Oskar and Zofia Hansen. It is an unusual and innovative project as compared to projects of its time, as a consequence of the author’s philosophy of design for the community. The design for the Botanical Garden presented below is one of the author’s plans that was never implemented, but the only one concerning space in landscape architecture. The main idea, which is based on the design of the entire structure of the garden and detailed design solutions, was based on the priority of the assemblage of plants (nature) over the recipient, man. It is the plants and their grouping that determine the way in which the visitor passes through the garden; many traditional paths were replaced by platforms and footbridges, situated over both land and water, or high up in the crowns of trees, so as to make the observation of nature possible without having to interfere with its existence (transformation and growth), and in this way to minimize damage to plants by future users. The design solutions proposed by Hansen, which at that time were perhaps only an executive utopia, especially due to technological limitations of the period, were certainly solutions decades ahead of their time, and that have only recently come into fashion, and are only now sought after as innovative projects.