How can collaborative design processes generate sensitive, green, and innovative forms of commemoration?

 

Overall context

Immanuel Löw, Chief Rabbi of Szeged and pioneering scholar of biblical and Talmudic botany, offers a powerful starting point for thinking about green commemoration. His work showed that plants, landscapes and natural environments are not only background to human history, but also carriers of language, ritual meaning, memory and care. Remembering Löw through public parks in Szeged (Hungary) demonstrates how commemoration can become a living, ecological practice: something that grows, changes, offers shade, improves urban space and invites long-term stewardship. This perspective also helps us understand projects such as Green Gwarna Street in Wrocław, where greenery is not treated as decoration, but as a sensitive, non-invasive way of marking a destroyed Jewish cemetery embedded in the contemporary city. Together, these examples show that green commemoration can connect Jewish memory, ecological responsibility and public space, creating forms of remembrance that are both ethical and usable in everyday life.

Case Study 1: Green Gwarna Street, Wrocław (Poland)

 

Highlights

  • Interdisciplinary collaboration combining art, sociology, landscape design, and heritage studies and green commemoration
  • Development of temporary, non-invasive commemorative concepts for a destroyed and unmarked cemetery
  • Addressing a hidden burial site embedded in contemporary urban fabric

 

Background 

The cemetery, established in the 18th century, was destroyed during and after World War II, and later partially built over and absorbed into dense urban infrastructure, including residential buildings and service areas. Today, the site remains largely unmarked, fragmented, and socially invisible, functioning as an everyday urban space without clear recognition of its historical and funerary character.

As a historical burial ground where human remains may still be present, the site is subject to ethical and religious constraints, including principles of Jewish law requiring non-invasive approaches. At the same time, its central location and lack of clear commemoration generate tensions between memory, urban use, and public awareness.

This makes Gwarna Street a paradigmatic example of a “non-site of memory” — a place where difficult heritage persists without adequate marking, recognition, or shared framework for engagement. For this reason, the workshop introduced green commemoration as an important design framework: participants were encouraged to think about remembrance through environmentally responsible, non-invasive, and potentially regenerative forms, including planting strategies, temporary ecological markers, landscape-based interventions, and artistic practices that improve the quality of urban space while respecting the cemetery’s sensitive status.

Description

The event “Commemoration through Visual Arts” took the form of a participatory workshop series combined with a student competition focused on developing proposals for temporary artistic interventions at the Jewish cemetery site at Gwarna Street.

An open call invited students from diverse disciplines including visual arts, design, humanities, and social sciences to form interdisciplinary teams. The selection process prioritised motivation, openness, and interest in memory work over prior experience.

Eighteen participants formed four mixed teams, working collaboratively during a three-day workshop hosted at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and on-site at Gwarna Street.

The programme combined:

  • historical and spatial contextualisation of the destroyed cemetery
  • introduction to Jewish funerary traditions and halachic principles governing burial sites
  • guided site visits to a fragmented, partially built-over urban space
  • expert consultations on non-invasive and temporary commemorative strategies
  • landscape and ecological consultations focused on green infrastructure, plant selection, environmentally responsible design, and ecological commemoration

Participants developed proposals responding directly to the site’s specific condition as:

  • a burial ground without visible boundaries,
  • a space shaped by post-war urban transformation,
  • a dense urban environment where commemoration can also contribute to ecological repair and public-space improvement.
  • a location requiring ethical sensitivity and minimal physical intervention.

The final stage consisted of public presentations, jury evaluation, and selection of a winning concept, with the possibility of future implementation.

Participatory Dimension

The co-creation process was structured as a multi-layered dialogue involving:

  • students and emerging professionals
  • experts in heritage, sociology, and art
  • representatives of Jewish heritage protection bodies
  • local activists and NGOs
  • descendants of pre-war Breslau residents

The inclusion of descendants introduced a transnational and intergenerational perspective, reinforcing the importance of sensitivity when working with a site where memory has been disrupted and physically erased.

 

Challenges

  • HOW to design commemorative interventions for a destroyed and partially built-over cemetery?
  • HOW to make an invisible or unmarked site legible in contemporary urban space?
  • HOW to respect ethical constraints while still enabling public engagement?

 

Solutions

  • Focusing on temporary and non-invasive artistic forms
  • Treating the site as a layered urban landscape rather than a clearly bounded monument
  • Integrating historical, spatial, and ethical knowledge into the design process
  • Using participatory methods to reintroduce the site into public awareness

 

Key Takeaways

  • Participatory co-creation is particularly valuable in sites that are destroyed, unmarked, or socially forgotten.
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration helps address the complexity of layered urban heritage.
  • Temporary artistic interventions offer a way to activate memory without altering sensitive ground conditions.
  • Reintroducing awareness of such sites requires combining knowledge, ethics, and public engagement.

Case Study 2: Immanuel Löw and Leopold Löw Parks, Szeged (Hungary)

 

Highlights

  • Transforming former parking lots into public parks dedicated to Jewish memory
  • Connecting academic research with public commemoration and urban green space
  • Involving the local Jewish community, residents, scholars, politicians and cultural institutions
  • Strengthening links between local history, Jewish heritage, ecology and public education

 

Description

The international conference dedicated to Immanuel Löw was held on 4–6 September 2024 at the Szeged Jewish Community Hall and in outdoor spaces connected to the newly named Immanuel Löw Park and Leopold Löw Park.

The event was organised around the green commemoration of Rabbi Immanuel Löw, Chief Rabbi of Szeged, whose intellectual legacy is inseparable from his work as a botanist and scholar of plants in Jewish textual tradition. Löw is especially remembered for his research on the plants and flowers of the Talmud, through which he connected religious scholarship, philology, natural history and botanical knowledge. His work demonstrated that Jewish textual study can also be a form of ecological attention: a way of observing, naming and understanding the natural world through language, tradition and lived environment.

For this reason, the creation of two public parks was not only a symbolic act of commemoration, but also a direct response to Löw’s botanical legacy. Two plots in Szeged that had previously functioned as parking lots were transformed into neighbouring green spaces and named after Immanuel Löw and his father Leopold Löw. This transformation turned a hard, car-oriented urban surface into living public space, linking Jewish memory with ecological renewal and everyday community use.

The choice of a park as a commemorative form reflected several dimensions of Immanuel Löw’s work. As a rabbi, he interpreted Jewish tradition; as a botanist, he studied plants as carriers of cultural, religious and environmental meaning; as a local public figure, he contributed to the intellectual and urban life of Szeged. The new parks therefore created a form of remembrance that corresponds to his own interdisciplinary practice: rooted in Jewish learning, attentive to nature, and embedded in the civic life of the city.

The green commemoration also invited participants to think about plants not merely as decoration, but as living elements of memory. In Löw’s scholarship, plants were connected to language, ritual, biblical and rabbinic interpretation, local landscapes and systems of knowledge. The parks extend this idea into public space: they offer a living memorial that can grow, change, be cared for and used by the local community.

The event brought together the local Jewish community, residents of the surrounding houses, local scholars and politicians, as well as scholars and representatives of the Jewish community from Budapest. Participating institutions included the Szeged Jewish Community, Budapest University of Jewish Studies, the Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest, the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, and Marom Budapest.

The conference programme combined academic discussion with public and environmental forms of commemoration. Presentations explored Löw’s role as a religious leader, scholar, local historian and botanist, while the inauguration of the parks translated this scholarship into an accessible urban form. The programme also included a screening of the documentary He Who Understood the Language of Plants, which preserved personal memories of Löw, and a guided memorial walk through sites connected to the Löw family in Szeged.

A central moment was the official inauguration of Leopold Löw Park and Immanuel Löw Park on Attila Street, near Mars Square. Through ceremonial speeches, public gathering and the physical presence of the new green spaces, the event connected Jewish intellectual history with contemporary urban ecology. The parks commemorate the Löw family and the Jewish community of Szeged, while also improving the urban environment for residents.

Challenges

  • HOW to commemorate a Jewish scholar whose legacy links religion, language and botanical knowledge through a form that is itself ecological?
  • HOW to transform an ordinary urban space, formerly used as parking lots, into a living memorial that serves both memory and the local environment?
  • HOW to make plants, greenery and care for public space meaningful carriers of Jewish memory rather than decorative additions?
  • HOW to ensure that green commemoration remains sustainable after the opening ceremony, through maintenance, public use and continued educational programming?

 

Solutions

  • Choosing a commemorative form directly connected to Immanuel Löw’s botanical research: two public parks rather than a conventional monument.
  • Transforming paved, car-oriented plots into accessible green spaces that improve the neighbourhood while commemorating Jewish history.
  • Treating plants as living elements of memory, linking Löw’s research on the plants of the Talmud with contemporary ecological awareness.
  • Combining the park inauguration with lectures, walks, film and synagogue/cemetery tours to show that ecology, Jewish scholarship and urban heritage are interconnected.
  • Planning continued work on translating and disseminating Löw’s botanical writings so that the green memorial remains connected to education and public knowledge.

 

Key Takeaways

  • Green commemoration works best when the ecological form grows directly from the site or figure being remembered.
  • Green memorials can combine remembrance with everyday public benefit.
  • Plants and landscape can act as respectful, non-invasive carriers of memory. This is especially important at burial sites, where ground disturbance must be avoided.
  • Green commemoration requires long-term stewardship, not only symbolic inauguration or design. Parks, plantings and ecological markers need maintenance, public understanding and educational programming.

 

See also: Case Studies 4.1, 4.2