Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

To perform a historical record of Beijers Park's development to date is about securing the tracks back in time. The historical record about the park tells not only the history of the park but the city, district, local residents and art of gardening. As the historical story is documented the necessary base for establishment of any care plans in the future and the base for cultural and historical value the park is made. Beijers park can in such work be treated alone or as part of the context of parks that were built during the same era in Malmö's history.

Beijers park origin from the era of the late 1800s, when the entire green structure in Malmö changed. The park area today covers 12 hectares and is located in the district Kirseberg. In 1885 the parkland began to be constructed. Many of the changes that have occurred in Beijer's park over the years can be traced to the changes that took place simultaneously in the city's other parks.

Malmö was a small town when the first public parks in the early 1800s began to be built in many western cities. Malmö was surrounded by a landscape of arable land, the climate was favorable and the soil fertile. Most of the greenery in the city at that time was in private hands. Philanthropists among citizens in the rapidly growing industrial city talked about working people's need for greenery.

Up to 1860 there were public parks only in a few cities in Sweden. Bourgeois middle class was crucial to the construction of the early public parks in Sweden and so was also the case in Malmö. Reasons for the parks can be traced to a desire for embellishment values, meeting places for citizens of the city and to be "tidy-reforms" "to the cities. Parks was also becoming an important element for a city to achieve a form of urbanity. Thoughts on sanitary and health improvements for the city and citizens also recorded.

Kungsparken was the first major public park built in Malmö. It was public but acted as "an extended upper-class saloon" with park guards who kept order of the visitors. In 1881 the city appointed a park committee to review the park issues. The same year, a planting association was founded in Malmö, later renamed the Malmö beautification and planting of association (Malmö Förskönings- och planteringsförening), through private initiatives. The planting association came to mean a lot for the city's greenery and parks development.

The concept and the possibility of a forest park in the city were discussed in Malmö in 1882 and also increased the pressure to build more public plantings. One of the initiators and founders of the plant association was merchant Gottfried Beijer. He applied with his brother, on his own initiative, on lease for a piece of land in the eastern suburb of Malmö and 1885 began with the construction of "a very attractive planting". The idea of this planting (Beijers Park) at the time was that it would be a counterpart to Kungsparken and was planned to accrue to the city for fifty years.
The main events and years for Beijers park took place in 1901 when the city took over the park, 1914 when the park opened to the public and later, in 1917, when the park opened in its entirety.

During the 1920s and 1930s the park had its shaping rate peak with a large "Mall" or promenade through the park's southern part and around it large open lawns. Following the current enlargement of the pond in the 1930's the park went into its more modern look and today and currently the city sets biodiversity in focus for the park's development. For the residents in neighboring areas around the park and also for many residents in the rest of Malmö Beijers park today is as a very important part of their living environment, quality of life and amenity of the city. It is sometimes possible to talk about a symbiotic relationship between the park and it´s residents.