History of the Department - Institute of Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning and Garden Art
Department of Urban Planning and Urban Green Infrastructure
History of the Department
Last modified: 07. October 2025
History of the Department and the Program
(compiled by Dr. István Schneller)
While the Faculty of Landscape Architecture already has a 30-year history, the Programmes of Urban Planning and design have a lifespan of less than 20 years.
The Urban and Regional Planning and Design course was created to fill a long-standing gap. In Hungary and in many countries of Europe, town planning was a specific outcome of the basic training in architecture. For a long time, urban planning was understood as a set of buildings and was taught at the Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology as a subsidiary discipline of architecture.
The lack of a complex, independent urban planning education was felt by many renowned experts, so a committee was set up as a consortium of several universities to prepare the establishment of the specialization, whose members included Tamás Meggyesi and Gábor Locsmándy from the BME Institute of Urban Planning, Imre Jámbor from the Faculty of Landscape Architecture and Gábor Reischl from the Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture. Delegates from the Polláck Mihály University of Pécs and the Széchenyi István University of Győr also participated in the preparatory committee. Thanks to a strong professional consensus, the first complex 5-year urban planning course was established, called Urban Planning Engineer. The name did not fully reflect the complexity of urban studies, but its classification as a technical degree course made it necessary. After the establishment of the course, the first cohort was launched in 2003, under the joint supervision of the Faculty of Landscape Architecture and the Faculty of Architecture, but with the dominant weight and direction of the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, under the responsibility of the Department of Landscape and Urban Design within the Faculty of Landscape Architecture.
In 2007, the independent Department of Landscape Architecture was established within the Faculty of Landscape Architecture. The rapid transition to the so-called Bologna education model, which started in 2006, has had a significant impact on the fate of the training of Urban and Regional planners. Due to this unfortunate decision, the Bsc. level in urban engineering could not be started, as the general aim was to reduce the number of bachelor courses. However, the teaching of municipal engineering at Msc. level continued, with the exception that it was possible to apply directly from the bachelor's degree courses in architecture, civil engineering and landscape architecture.
The Msc. in Urban Planning was, however, now solely sponsored by the Department of Landscape Architecture of Corvinus University. At the same time, training continued in Pécs and Győr.
The last five-year cohort graduated in 2008, and education continued in 2009 with students from the Landscape Gardening Bachelor's degree course. Much of the teaching material had to be compressed into two years, which caused a large number of problems. Nevertheless, the course proved popular in its first years.
Around 75 students graduated from the three five-year courses, while from 2011 onwards, some 110-120 students graduated continuously. In the last period, approximately 200 students have graduated with a degree in urban planning and, after a certain period of practical training, with a right to plan urban areas. With the exception of Budapest and cities with county authority status, graduates can also take on the role of chief architect, for which, despite the traditional title, they are best qualified and prepared.
The Department of Urban Planning and Urban Green Infrastructure's internal and external staff include theoretical urbanists, practicing urban planners and architects. Among them are the first head of the department, Dr. István Schneller, Imre Körmendy, who has a professional management background, Judit Gergely Korompay and István Kotsis, who have been town planners for a long time, Ute Albrecht and István András, who work at the Bfvt, Lajos Koszorú, head of the Teampannon, and practising architects such as Anna Szövényi and Beáta Polyák.
The diversity of the profession is also reflected in the leadership of the department, with urbanists, architects and landscape architects all having held this role over the past decade.
From 2003 until his retirement, the Department was headed by Dr. István Schneller, an urbanist architect, followed by Dr. Mariann Simon, an architect, from 2015 to 2017, then Csaba Valkai, an architect, from 2017 to 2018 and from 2019 to 2022 by Dr. Ildikó Réka Báthoryné Nagy, a landscape architect.
The Faculty of Landscape Architecture has been a great asset for the training of landscape architects, as it has increased environmental awareness instead of the object-centricity that dominates architectural education. At the same time, however, the current economic and political lobbying based on real estate development has significantly reduced the influence of urbanists on the development of municipalities. It will be the task of future urbanists to strengthen the authority and influence of the profession.