Marta Szar, a student at the Krakow University of Technology, majoring in landscape architecture, has been awarded the Grand Prize in the international Vectorworks Design Prize 2022 competition.

Marta Szar’s work is a design for a park on the site of an ecological wasteland located in Krakow. The area is surrounded by urbanised districts, but is still characterised by varied relief, hydrography, and biodiversity.

In the opinion of the jury, the ‘Rain Park’ project incorporates the realisation of two objectives: On the one hand, it envisages the creation of an urban zone that is a recreational area for local residents; on the other, it uses the bird sanctuary to create a natural zone. After extensive research into local needs and a series of urban and landscape analyses, a proposal for a new park was created. The designed urban recreation area is clearly divided into zones where visitors are only guests.

For the designer, it was important to exploit the hydrological potential of the site and transform the area into a coherent retention system with a number of solutions that support local retention.