Hungary
Design development
The gardens
The project’s aim was to provide hospitality for
affluent guests, which required high-quality build-
ings, furniture and equipment in the guestrooms,
together with the best of rural cuisine. The aim
was to create a homely atmosphere, so that the
clients would come back time and time again. This
is not the cold, severe and elegant style of a hotel,
but an enchanting and vibrant rural hospitality with
activities in the garden, and the lively proximity of
domestic animals, such as horses, donkeys, sheep,
goats, rabbits, chickens and geese.
The second phase of the development aimed to
provide a wider range of services for guests. There
is a group of buildings for company training and
conferences, complemented by open air structures,
a swimming pool, areas for intimate garden parties,
and an open air oven for bread-baking and traditional
cooking. A health and fitness centre with a garden
as a core element is also under development. The
guests will be able to rejuvenate physically and
mentally in the Garden of Harmony, designed by
Gábor Szücs.
Some gardens demonstrate the designer’s will,
but do not last; some can only be maintained by
regular pruning, forcing plants against their natural
habits; but the Garden of Somogy is alive and ever-
changing. The designer’s personality is expressed
in a vivid, lively garden; henceforth the user of the
garden will keep this process alive and moving. The
plan secures a moment, but it also encodes proc-
esses of birth, change and passing. While, in the
case of a building, the architecture can give a per-
manent frame to a shifting way of life, the keeper of
a garden constantly reforms it, in keeping with the
changing needs of life, and the garden designer can
only provide a foundation. It is not just the garden
itself that is organic, but also the process through
which the garden is planned, created and construct-
ed throughout the course of its existence.
The client, in this case, gave the designer a fairly
open brief. She made some stipulations about park-
ing spaces for herself and for her guests, and about
open space for family activities. It was also very
important to her that the typical flora of the Somogy
landscape should be used in the garden. Otherwise
she entrusted everything to the designer.
The designer was excited by the diversity and the
romantic/picturesque aspects of the area. The new
buildings were built on a high terrace, lying next to
the main road, with a good view over the rippling
hills and the low valley of a stream lined with trees
and shrubs. There were no flat areas suitable for
use around the buildings, as the sloping hillside
