Lužánky Park

Lužánky Park lies below the steep hillside plot that Viktor Landauer presents as the setting for a proposed family home. In the site’s defining view, the meadow descends toward trees and a large house, then toward Parkstrasse and the park; beyond it, the city spreads out below. The park is both a real feature of the landscape and a point of orientation within a place where Czech and Austrian names coexist.

Setting and Names

When Viktor describes the prospective site to architect Rainer von Abt, he places Lužánky Park beneath the hill and explains that it was formerly called Augarten. He remarks that everything where they live has two names, Austrian and Czech, making the altered name more than a geographical detail: it reflects the layered identities of the world in which the house is to be built.

The Park in the View from the Plot

The park enters the story as part of the prospect from Černopolní, the steep hill overlooking Město. On a wet, blustery day, Viktor brings Rainer and Liesel Landauer to the plot. Beyond a gate, the meadow falls first gently and then steeply toward trees; a large house is faintly visible among them, with Parkstrasse and Lužánky Park beyond. From the gravel lay-by, the city stretches toward the Špilas fortress, while smoke from its chimneys smudges the view.

Role in the House’s Setting

Viktor calls the hillside Rainer’s canvas and asks him to imagine a family home for himself, Liesel, and as many as three eventual children, with a suggested area of three hundred square metres. Lužánky Park helps define the site’s relation to the city: the house is envisioned above a descending meadow, with the park and urban view laid out below. Liesel, looking through rain-blurred spectacles, agrees that the position is fine, though she cannot yet picture a building there; the wind catches her breath as she follows the two men across the empty hillside. The park thus belongs to the landscape before the house has taken shape, a stable point in the prospect around which the architectural possibility is first imagined.