Jakub Botwina, Beata Fortuna-Antoszkiewicz, Jan Łukaszkiewicz
DOI: 10.21858/msr.se.2025.04
Vol. no: SE.2025
The area where General Jerzy Ziętek Voivodeship Park of Culture and Recreation was established had consisted primarily of the degraded post-mining areas, spoil heaps, landfills, sinkholes and marshes. In 1950, due to the initiative of General Jerzy Ziętek, the Governor of Silesia, it was decided to establish one of the largest urban parks in Europe on the border of Katowice, Chorzów and Siemianowice. The design was commissioned to Prof. Władysław Niemirski of the Warsaw–Ursynów school of landscape architecture at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. The realisation work had begun in 1951 and lasted for almost 20 years until 1968. The park’s programme was designed to offer a great variety of recreational and natural functions, making this realisation unique both in Poland and Europe. Among the numerous attractions, several objects deserved special attention, such as the amusement park, the zoo, the planetarium, the extensive water system and the forest zone. The modernity of the park can also be attested by the diversity of its internal transportation system with a wide walking promenade, numerous paths for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as a narrow-gauge railroad and a cable car, which provide access to the most distant parts of this nearly 600 ha area. Along the central axis of the park, a number of theme gardens were designed, yet only some of these have been realised. The most important of these, designed by Prof. Edward Bartman, are the rose garden and the Japanese Garden, the latter of which has been realised only partially. Under cooperation between the Department of Landscape Architecture of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and Silesian Park, a comprehensive natural inventory and a series of pre-design analyses of the area were carried out between 2014 and 2016. The concept for modernisation of the Japanese Garden was developed in the next step, followed by the construction project and the construction permit. The work on the detailed construction documentation was completed in the autumn of 2016. The design had been realised and put into operation in July 2021. In 2023, it won the internauts’ vote in the “Public Space” category of the Plebiscite Polish Architecture 2022. The paper presents the most important results of the spatial analyses carried out, the programme, assumptions and methods, as well as selected design solutions related to the design and realisation of the Japanese Garden in General Jerzy Ziętek Voivodeship Park of Culture and Recreation.
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