Fictional Garden

Abstract

The project investigates Uzvaras Park (Victory Park) in Riga as a narrated urban figure, focusing on the themes of contestation and reconciliation. It analyzes the park’s role and form in the changing socio-political context and, with the means of spatial design, proposes an alternative vision for its redevelopment from a conflicted demolition site into a unifying habitat of nature and culture.

Based on conclusions taken from the research, the design method manifested itself as the selection and combination of historical layers together in a collage of spatial fictions, playing with and reframing existing dichotomies between their forms and meanings.

All layers were perceived as equally important, that way removing the former hierarchy between them, which was so characteristic of the previous approach to the park – when with each new ideology the previous layer was put into oblivion, as the regime desired to oppress nature into its image. By treating all former visions of Uzvaras Park, completed/only imagined/devalued/destroyed, as reference material for constructing the new park – the project strives for the much-needed reconciliation between these conflicting visions and allows them to coexist harmoniously in this use-wise no longer monumental space of prosaic recreation.