The Gothic church in Lincolnshire, in England, is used as a home by its current owners. The restoration of the Grade II listed church has been carried out with great care and attention to detail, preserving the original stained glass windows, steeple and altar.
The large-scale real estate development project known as BudaPart is one of Budapest's largest brownfield-revitalisations in the Lágymányosi Bay area, next to River Danube.
In rural areas of Hungary, old farmhouses are often found, but their construction is still adequate today. These buildings are often listed as historical monuments, thus preserving the architectural features of the past, according to the landscape. The biggest challenge in renovating them is therefore the amount of money that needs to be invested and the need to use traditional building materials and methods, which are a consequence of the local protection, in a way that meets the needs of 21st century users.
One of the largest residential complexes in Hungary was built in the city centre of Szeged from more than 7000 prefabricated elements and a total of 8510 m3 of concrete. The project in Huszár Street includes 593 apartments, offices and shops.
The six-hectare site, replacing the industrial character of the former cable factory and wholesale food site, will provide a green environment for its future residents in the city centre. Cedar Grove takes its name from the evergreen that grows there.
In Budapest, at the intersection of Árpád út and Váci út, one of the most innovative residential parks in the city was built on an empty plot of land that has been unused for more than ten years. Historically, the area is known for its manufacturing industry, which, however, collapsed after the regime change in 1989, and the buildings previously standing here were also demolished. After that, the building complex now known as Panoráma Lakópark (Panorama Residence) was built here as a brownfield investment between 2018-2020.
One of the most famous examples of railroad reuse as a green space is the High Line (or High Line Park) in New York, which has been recognised as an icon of innovative design since its opening in 2009, and serves as a model for the reuse of abandoned infrastructure in other cities around the world. However, not everyone knows that the design of the High Line itself was based on another development, the Coulée verte René-Dumont (also known as the Promenade Plantée) in Paris, which opened in the early 1990s.
The 1879 flood in Szeged practically leveled the city, which was then built of adobe houses with irregular lines, to the ground. Although the steadily rising flood levels since 1855 and the floods of the 1870s highlighted the weakness of the embankments and the lack of organised protection, no planned intervention was made.
In the centre of Kreuzberg, in the east of Berlin, is the landscape wound left behind by the railway, which until 2011 defined the district. Over the years, nature has started to take over the abandoned railway, which German urban development agency Atelier Loidl has taken the opportunity to transform into a diverse park forest, using the infrastructure elements left behind.
Merwede is a neighbourhood in Utrecht, one of the fastest growing cities in the Netherlands. An old industrial area, it is now undergoing a transformation process based on urban planning criteria that puts clean and shared mobility ahead of the existing prioritisation of road traffic.The demolition works have begun in 2020 and the final project includes sustainable housing for around 12,000 people (the first residents are expected to move in by 2024). The new neighbourhood of Merwede will enable residents to access all the services on foot or using bicycles.
The municipality of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority want to develop M4H (Merwe-Vierhavens, a 100 years old harbour area in the City of Rotterdam, a brownfield area with heavily polluted soil) into an innovative living-work environment, optimally equipped for innovative manufacturing industry and with a mix of working, residential, culture, catering, sports and education. An energetic district with an impact on both the city and the port.
In 2017, the municipality and the Port Authority formulated five objectives for M4H: