Set amid skyscrapers, city pavement and noisy streets, parks offer a great escape from city life. Even a short break feels like a mini-holiday. Take a deep breath, catch some nature (and birds and dogs), put on your running shoes or take your laptop outside and enjoy the oasis. We took a tour of our favourite parks and spoke to Petra Funke from Gustafson Porter, an international landscape practice based in London.
What are the ‘trends’?
“We become more and more urban. Urban living influences the mental and physical health of people. Parks are an opportunity to make cities healthy, to design a positive and sustainable environment. There is a trend of recycling and using materials found on-site and locally.”
What do parks add to cities?
“A park needs to draw from and be as diverse as the population, with layers of complexity. Issues that need to be addressed include ecology, intimacy, gatherings, the desire for joy and tranquillity. It is important to balance the needs of a diverse population. A park should be a source of discovery and wonderment, anchored in a specific historical, cultural and spatial context.”
How do you design a park for a city?
“Space is made up of elements that frame within the vertical and the ground plane. Human nature and the physical plane are closely connected, defining comfort or discomfort. How you work the ground plane creates different moods and emotions. We analyse light, vibes, the essence of the place. Once we move outdoors and into a specific cultural context, we are concerned with external parameters. We learn and understand and transform a place into a space that emerged from a particular culture and a particular site.”
Great parks to visit
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Vondelpark, Amsterdam
For the sheer range of activities, events and views throughout the year.
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Hyde Park, London
We love spending time here. To see Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, visit the Serpentine gallery or just relax.
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Central Park, NYC
Central Park has so many things to do that you will find it hard to make time for the rest of the city.
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Phoenix Park, Dublin
Gardens, monuments and wildlife.
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Chapultepec Park, Mexico City
A popular spot, with 1800 acres, several lakes, forested land, museums, and the residence of the President of Mexico.
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Bitsevsky Park, Moscow
a huge open area to get away from the city. It is the place in Moscow to go cycling in the summer and skiing in the winter.
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Yoyogi Park, Central Tokyo
A lovely park of 133 acres in one of the most dense and expensive urban areas in the world.
Running in the park
It’s a breeze to run in the park. The city’s uneven pavements and narrow sidewalks are the archillesheel of runners’, ready to throw them off balance. This is why city folk crowd suburban parks in the morning. How lovely to run on grass or packed dirt trails, without carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide! Whether you want a Zen walk or a total Rocky workout – both with pure oxygen – plan your own route on this website.
Book City Parks
Parks, like cities, are constantly developing and are never completed. It reflects a belief that well-planned, well-designed and well-managed parks remain invaluable components of cities today. An extraordinary look at twenty public parks in a number of major cities in North America and Western Europe.
Gustafson Porter:
Gustafson Porter in London operates across the diverse disciplines of landscape, architecture, engineering and design and is familiar with a wide range of working methods and best practice. Their projects cover a wide range of functions, climate zones, geographical and geophysical character. From the sizeable 15ha culture park Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam to the intimate Treasury Courtyards, London, and the first ever landscape installation at the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice.
