Torparängens park

The mission

Torparängen is a new district in southern Växjö, located on the shores of Lake Södra Bergundasjön. liljewall was one of three architectural firms that participated in the parallel assignments that formed the basis of the area’s new detailed plan. We have since been entrusted with developing a design program and designing construction documents for a new city park. The park has been designed to develop while maintaining legibility even with minimal maintenance, with a given place for nature’s spontaneous processes; the north side of the walkways is tightly paved while the south side, like the concrete casting joints, are left open. In the same spirit, birches were planted in the middle of the southern walkway, as an invitation to dialogue and negotiation, while the cultivated and organized order contrasts to the north. Through a simple palette of traditional materials, consistently repeated in different scales, the design aims for a legible, open form. The park’s newly built ruin (Fåfängan) gathers and organizes the loosely connected surroundings and at the same time opens a window into the landscape’s history.

From a walking area to a neighborhood and a neighborhood park

The project investigates and shapes the history of the landscape into a form that responds to the needs and motifs of the contemporary public park. Starting from a cairn along the southern border, the park is shaped according to the strict geometry of the cultivated landscape, where dark, tall spruce forest forms the typical Småland background motif. The project was already initiated in the detailed plan stage with a parallel assignment, which meant that the buildings, the park’s idea, size and landscape design have been consistently connected through
all phases of the project.

The geometric agricultural landscape

The park’s main entrance introduces the formal leitmotif with its sunken geometric shape, which is then repeated in the central park space. In a landscape characterized by cairns and rocky moraine, the gabions take on the role of a contemporary incarnation and, through a rhythmic repetition, convey an interpreted image of the landscape. The robustness of the park’s built character makes room for rugged plants and spontaneous vegetation and also functions without maintenance. The northern part is characterized by the order of the cultivated landscape, both through the arrangement and division of the various platforms and is emphasized with geometric plantings with deserted moorland species and the nobler flowers of the meadow.