Sándor Bardóczi

Certified landscape architect and senior designer and honorary associate professor. Presently he is the chief landscape architect of the Municipality of the City of Budapest Mayor’s Office. He gained professional experience at VÁTI, Urbanitás Ltd. and Ökoplan GIS Ltd. Between 2007 and 2019 he started to work as a freelance designer, municipal and government consultant in various urban-scale green infrastructure projects. Among other things, he carried out regional research and planning works on the Szigetköz Inland Delta Region, the entire Hungarian section of the Danube, planned the Tisza river region and Vas County Regional Plan. In Sopron, Budapest, Komárom and Zala County, Eger and the settlements of the Budapest agglomeration, he participated in urban planning tasks, environmental impact assessments, and the preparation of urban development plans.

His university thesis was used in the process of declaring the "cultural landscape" of the Tokaj Wine Region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He was the co-designer of the Népliget Action Area Plan, the Margitsziget Strategy, the Rákos-creek rehabilitation, the Országbíró building estate green infrastructure concept of the XIII. District, the Integrated Urban Development Strategy of Balatonboglár, the landscape plan of the Máriagyűd shrine. He is a leading landscape architect, municipal green space and landscaping designer, and has the rights of spatial planning. Member of the Budapest Chamber of Architects, between 2009 and 2020 he was a member of the board of the Landscape and Garden Architecture Section of the Hungarian Chamber of Architects. From 2020, he is the chief landscape architect of Budapest, the founder and head of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Mayor's Office. In 2012, he was awarded the Silver Pencil Award by the Hungarian Arts Foundation for his work as a writer in the online magazine of Architect Forum, and in 2022, the domestic professional organizations decorated him with the Landscape Architect of the Year Award.

The Carpathian Basin would be the most strongly modifying region of the climate change in Europe. Whit in this the most populated urban areas could be affected by heat waves, heat islands, dried seasons, lack of water resources, desertification, floods, heavy rainfalls, frozenless mild winter periods, laggard winters. Budapest and its suburban areas are also targeted, We must prepare ourselves and brace the impacts. What can we do to transform our mindset and after this step our open spaces to a climate proof stage and what kind of new ideas can help us to have a chance to survive this massive social and ecological crisis in city level? 

The sponge city concept, rain gardens, the nature based solutions, the ecological mindset, the new planting methods can really help this transformation. Adaptation and learning the technical details from other cities is important, but the big question is the social critical mass among the pioneer processes and the budget side. How could we crack the asphalt landscape to turn green? How could we hack the public utility lobby to keep our trees safe? How could we calm the road traffic to use the Covid period?

How could use the flooding periods and subway traffic and massive public utility replacements or the Chain Bridge renovation to reach our traffic-calming tasks at the inner city? How could we turn our poor budgeted lawn moving maintenance into a wildflower meadow program and how the heat waves could help to understand for the common people. How could we turn our planting methods thanks to social interests and NGOs? How the local election campaigns help to hit glass walls to get a giant leap in our City Hall Park project? In essence, this presentation demonstrates how we implemented pilot projects from the community based small scale projects to the mega projects and how we start to communicate to the local communities with in this process on the past five years. Only well-prepared projects can reach a majority, so it goes very slowly. Slower than we expected or we want. But if we are quicker we can destroy the whole process. All about the balancing. The early participation, the tactical urbanism, the pilot small scale programs and the well-prepared media coverage and decision-making and political actions are the key elements to change the social thinking. And this is the way to change the city to a resilience one. Budapest is on a greening journey and I can show you some partial results on this hard way.

Certified landscape architect and senior designer and honorary associate professor. Presently he is the chief landscape architect of the Municipality of the City of Budapest Mayor’s Office. He gained professional experience at VÁTI, Urbanitás Ltd. and Ökoplan GIS Ltd. Between 2007 and 2019 he started to work as a freelance designer, municipal and government consultant in various urban-scale green infrastructure projects. Among other things, he carried out regional research and planning works on the Szigetköz Inland Delta Region, the entire Hungarian section of the Danube, planned the Tisza river region and Vas County Regional Plan. In Sopron, Budapest, Komárom and Zala County, Eger and the settlements of the Budapest agglomeration, he participated in urban planning tasks, environmental impact assessments, and the preparation of urban development plans.

His university thesis was used in the process of declaring the "cultural landscape" of the Tokaj Wine Region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He was the co-designer of the Népliget Action Area Plan, the Margitsziget Strategy, the Rákos-creek rehabilitation, the Országbíró building estate green infrastructure concept of the XIII. District, the Integrated Urban Development Strategy of Balatonboglár, the landscape plan of the Máriagyűd shrine. He is a leading landscape architect, municipal green space and landscaping designer, and has the rights of spatial planning. Member of the Budapest Chamber of Architects, between 2009 and 2020 he was a member of the board of the Landscape and Garden Architecture Section of the Hungarian Chamber of Architects. From 2020, he is the chief landscape architect of Budapest, the founder and head of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Mayor's Office. In 2012, he was awarded the Silver Pencil Award by the Hungarian Arts Foundation for his work as a writer in the online magazine of Architect Forum, and in 2022, the domestic professional organizations decorated him with the Landscape Architect of the Year Award.