The new law on Hungarian architecture, which treats landscape architecture as a priority area, is approaching the finishing line, said Regő Lánszki, State Secretary for Architecture, at the 4th Mihály Mőcsényi Conference on Garden Art and Garden History in Fertőd, Hungary. The State Secretary announced that the law to be submitted to Parliament in the autumn will require the involvement of a landscape architect for the design of the environment of public buildings, parks and gardens, and will also introduce a green space certificate similar to the energy certification system.
For the fourth time, the Esterházy Palace in Fertőd hosted a series of conferences named after Mihály Mőcsényi, a prominent figure in Hungarian landscape architecture education and a Széchenyi, Kossuth and Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award winner landscape architect. While last year’s focus was on the relationship between music and garden art, this year it will be on water, a subject that concerns many of us and affects us all. Opening the international conference, Regő Lánszki, State Secretary for Architecture at the Ministry of Construction and Transport, said that: „We take a complex approach to architecture and landscape design. It is very important that whatever we build should fit into its environment in scale, material and spirit. The harmony between nature and the built environment, between buildings and gardens, creates an environment that can be the key to improving our quality of life. It is in this complexity that landscape architecture has found its rightful place.” – said Regő Lánszki.
Dr. Ágnes Herczeg, the president of the Hungarian Garden Heritage Foundation (HGHF), which organized the conference, recalled that the establishment of the organization is intended to settle the decades-old debt of the profession by raising the landscape architecture profession to a proper status. In the two years of its existence, significant progress has been achieved, among other things, in the reforming of the practices and regulatory environment for domestic green infrastructure development, and surveying the current condition and developing a sustainability strategy for historic gardens owned and managed by the public, church and private sectors. The Foundation has established an inter-professional stakeholder forum to develop strategies on a number of issues, such as the elaboration of a national nursery programme.
