Hungary’s government has finalised and approved plans to create a new museum quarter, significantly inflating the previous budget by around three times to HUF200bn (US$710.3m, €643.3m, £464.3m).

The cultural quarter known as Park Budapest, has been designed by multiple architects narrowed down from more than 500 anonymous applications. The Museum of Ethnography will be built in line with plans by French architecture practice Vallet de Martinis DIID Architectes, while Japanese firm Sou Fujimoto Architects has designed the House of Hungarian Music. Hungarian firm KÖZTI Architects & Engineers will design both the PhotoMuseum and Museum of Hungarian Architecture and Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta and Japanese design studio SANAA are designing the New National Gallery and Ludwig Museum.

Speaking at a parliamentary hearing, László Baán, the government commissioner in charge of developing ‘MuseumPark’, said the project would draw an extra 300,000 tourists to Budapest every year as the city tries to compete with other popular culture destinations across Europe, such as Prague and Barcelona.

There has been some opposition to the project, with political opponents to the current government and environmental lobbyists calling the project politically motivated, unnecessary, expensive and that it would eat into green space in the capital. Baan denied this however, saying the museums would only use areas already covered by concrete, though original plans said 65 per cent of green space would be retained. In addition Baan said the plans would link the City Park to the city centre via a “green corridor”.

Built within Budapest’s largest park, Városliget, the development will see old buildings onsite demolished and replaced with new structures. The new cultural quarter will mainly replace a wide concrete promenade used during the Communist era and a large car park that formerly acted as a parade ground. Work on the development is expected to start in 2016, with the museum quarter scheduled to be open by March 2018.