Aerial view of site

Sponsors: City of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina 
Type: Internation, open, anonymous
Fees: none
Languages: English/Serbian
Eligibiility: Architects, Landscape Architects, Designers
Timetable: 5 December 2021 – Design submissions deadline
Awards:
– FIRST PRIZE                                     15.000,00 EUR (equivalent in BAM)
– SECOND PRIZE                                    7.500,00 EUR (equivalent in BAM)
– THIRD PRIZE                                    3.750,00 EUR (equivalent in BAM)
Design Criteria:
Competition Jury will evaluate the submitted competition proposals according to the following criteria:
Meeting the requirements of the competition announcement and program;
The quality of spatial structure and the connection between spatial contents;
Evaluated will be the connectedness and relations of spatial wholes of the complex on two levels including the following:
• a functional one which refers to movement efficiency of users and the availability of spatial contents and sub-wholes of the complex, all in relation to the hierarchy of their purposes;
• spatial-semantic which refers to the metaphorical expression of the spatial structure of the complex.
A design will be evaluated where users orient themselves in an appropriate way, and efficiently access the spatial content they use. The various levels of movement should be undisturbed from each other. A special complexity is the fact that there are two basic types of traffic in the complex, pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and within different categories. In addition, the interrelationship of spatial sub-wholes will be evaluated, which ensures their optimal functioning, having in mind the characteristics of individual, key contents that, including the simultaneous presence of a large number of users, may overlap in their activities.

•Improvement of the identity of the place/location
The attractiveness and recognisability of the space of the park complex and the immediate surroundings will be evaluated through the offered design of urban structures and ambient wholes. In addition to the efficient functioning of the complex, its spatial anatomy must metaphorically express the character and interrelationships of the spatial contents that make it up. The spatial structure should be a “text” that communicates to the user a message about a place where sports, recreation, culture, art and leisure occur and where ideas and emotions are exchanged for the purpose of progress and upgrade of the whole local and wider community, because parks have a specific character as living structures of the urban context, and they are close to each of the inhabitants of Banja Luka and remain as important messages about time. They are to the city like a metaphor is to a poet, without them the city loses its identity.

• Quality of landscape shaped structure and connecting with the existing vegetation
Criteria for evaluating of the shaping of the green structure of the park are as follows: unity and proportionality of constituent elements and the whole landscape, decoration of forms, colour relationship of plant groups entering the composition as well as individual solitary trees, laws of line and air perspective, light and shadow relationships, ways of shaping of the composition, providing balance and the context itself. The vital green fund should be kept, with appropriate interventions in the capacity of conservation, and linked in an environmentally friendly manner to the proposed green matrix design. In the spirit of modern tendencies of landscape design that promotes the importance of ecosystem services and nature-inspired solutions, it is necessary to form creative compositional structures of different colours, contrasting volumes and surface textures, which abound in values and different time rhythms of physiological processes.

• Compatibility with parameters of location
The proposed design must be sustainable in terms of usability, feasibility and maintenance. The concept of space exploitation, the logic of its use, movement, position of the entrance, the sense of keeping users in the space, the performance aspect and maintenance requirements, as well as the use of location parameters will be evaluated.

• Stages of realization
The offered designs will be evaluated through the realization of the possibility of stage realization, i.e. the possibilities of gradual growth and natural development of the content on the principles of sustainability of the existing spatial benefits.

• Rationality of the design
The offered design needs to solve the network of internal traffic as an infrastructure element of support of functioning of the complex.

• Green and Smart approach
Part of the bid invitation task is to formulate the manner of realization of the complex that should be built using the green and smart concept; The connection of modern technological solutions that will enable energy efficiency, i.e. the realization of additional value for all participants in the process of construction and use of the complex, society as a whole, as well as nature itself, will be evaluated.

For the Q&A site and documentation available in English on the following link:
en.banjaluka.rs.ba/competition-park-bl