Green Diagonal Park

Morphology of Barcelona, a geographical city

The Romans founded Barcelona on a plain with a soft slope oriented towards the southeast and surrounded on four sides by important geographic features: to the southeast the Mediterranean Sea; to the northeast the Besòs River; to the southwest the Llobregat River; and to the northwest the Collserola mountain range. Currently, the metropolitan area of Barcelona has 3.5 million inhabitants, although the municipality concentrates 1.5 million in just 100 hectares. It is one of the densest cities in Europe, with hardly any parks.

Growth of the city and Idelfons Cerdà’s design for the Eixample

Barcelona was founded as Barcino between 15 and 10 BC, initially with the urban form of a castrum and, later, an oppidum. This configuration remained almost entirely intact throughout the Middle Ages and with very few changes up until the 19th century, when the city began to densify, eventually becoming an insalubrious metropolis with high mortality rates. Despite the booming economy that attracted immigration from rural areas, for political reasons the city was unable to tear down its walls and expand until the final decades of the 19th century. Once expansion became possible, the city grew rapidly in keeping with the plan for the Eixample, across what was essentially an agricultural plain, almost entirely devoid of constructions. Ildefons Cerdà coined the word “urbanization” in his treatise General Theory of Urbanization, in which he proposed a regular square grid for Barcelona with 100-meter sides and a network of 20-meter-wide streets. The only exceptions to this network were five 50-meter-wide streets, which he called “transcendental roads”: Passeig de Gràcia; Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes; Avinguda Diagonal; and the last two, eminently geographical in nature, Avinguda del Paral·lel and Avinguda Meridiana [parallels and meridians]. The 90-degree intersection of the latter two coincides at a point in the port where a clock tower marks its position. Although contemporary Barcelona is hyperdensified, the Eixample plan allocated more than half of the surface area for public green space, where the “transcendental roads” were meant to “connect the city with the world”. In the early 20th century, this grid made it easy to accommodate an increasing density – by eliminating the planned green spaces, and the roads that had been desiged for more primitive modes of transport ended up succumbing to the hegemony of the automobile. The city was once again trapped – not by walls, but within its geographical limits, with high levels of environmental pollution and very few green spaces. The ideas from Ildefons Cerdà’s plan for the Eixample (1860-70) are essential in the conception of the Park, especially with regard to its transcendental roads.

Urban plans and projects from 1888 to 2018: from The Ciutadella to The Green Diagonal Park

Historically, Barcelona has been able to develop urban plans at the right time to take advantage of public and private investments associated with international events. In the 19th century, such events were understood by the emerging industrial bourgeoisie as opportunities for investing their capital, not only in pursuit of an economic benefit, but also in the interest of improving the city. The bourgeoisie had the necessary financial wherewithal to support the urban development of Barcelona’s Eixample and was willing to continue investing in new projects. The sequence of events surrounding the 1888 and 1929 World’s Fairs were proof of this. In 1888, the military citadel was transformed into an urban park outfitted with a variety of facilities, the Parc de la Ciutadella. In 1929, a new fairground was built at the foot of Montjuïc, near Plaça Espanya.

Following the instability of the 1930s, marked by social, economic and political crises in the Western world, Spain was plunged into a civil war (1936-39) and then a 40-year dictatorship that overlapped with the Second World War. When the dictator died in 1975, and after a period of transition, democracy was restored and the Statutes of Autonomy were established, which grouped together provinces with their own historical entity under autonomous governing bodies, one of which was the Generalitat de Catalunya (Barcelona). In this political context, the city of Barcelona, in alliance with a dynamic political class and Barcelona’s architecture school, began preparing urban renewal plans to take back public space as a fundamental sphere for all citizens – a space which, under the dictatorship, had been a sphere of oppression, where freedom of opinion and free will were all but impossible.

These plans and projects took shape in the early decades of democracy in keeping with the notion of “monumentalizing the outskirts”, building exquisitely designed public squares in all neighborhoods but also laying out more ambitious plans for a renovation of the entire city, including the historic center. Many of these plans came to a head with the opportunity provided by the 1992 Olympic Games, under the leadership of the city’s chief architect, Oriol Bohigas and the mayor Pasqual Maragall. This event served as a catalyst for the investment required for opening the city toward the sea, reorganizing vehicle traffic with the construction of the ring roads, refurbishing the old city with the renovation of public spaces in the Gothic Quarter and the Raval neighborhood, and consolidating the public squares in the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. It was a smalland large-scale urban operation that has since been studied around the world and has generally been deemed successful. After 1992, the next big event was the Forum of Cultures (2004), which, despite certain difficulties and perhaps a few mistakes, fueled the development of the area where Avinguda Diagonal reaches the sea, and the final stretch of beaches between the Olympic village (Vila Olímipica) and the Besòs River, including the ecological restoration of the river.

Cross-cutting civic axes

Visitors who arrive at the new Green Diagonal Park by train from other places, biking down from the mountains, or walking in from the city will experience how the old scar of the railway has given way to a welcome green carpet, where the surrounding neighborhoods can see a reflection of their identities. The neighborhoods that run from Sant Andreu to La Sagrera have never had any connection with the areas of Sant Martí and Bon Pastor. Now is the time to bring them together, to connect citizens and make the park into a meeting point, a communication link. The design focuses on aligning the urban fabrics, which range from the orthogonal grid of the Eixample, in the Bac de Roda area, to the fabric of Sant Andreu, Sant Martí or the novel layouts of the new areas along the borders. A system of cross-cutting paths is implemented. They are straight, narrow and with parallel edges – structured like a fishbone – prioritizing functionality and connectivity. They create nine key civic axes through which the park will interact, actively participating in the socioeconomic reinvigoration of the area: Green Diagonal - Camí Comtal Park - Les Glòries - Ciutadella - Mar; the historic road in Sant Martí de Provençals - Gran de Sant Andreu; the social axis Pegaso - Sant Martí; les Rambles Onze de SetembrePrim; the cultural axis of Fabra i Coats; the Forums of Sant Andreu - La Maquinista; the modern heritage axis of GATEPAC; the water network of the Rec Comtal - La Trinitat; and the corridor Camí ComtalBesòs - Pirineu Comtal.

Playgrounds

The Green Diagonal Park aims to construct the cultural landscape in a palimpsest of natural and artificial elements. The play areas for all ages will be strategic elements in cementing the link between citizens and the new infrastructure with its range of uses. Over the length of the park, spaced approximately every 400 m, there will be a series of play areas, understood as milestone-spaces, which will offer unique types of play for collective interaction. Each play area will have its own specific design, incorporating slides, zip lines, sandboxes, spaces for hiding or climbing, digital interaction elements, graphic elements, apparatuses for stretching or different types of physical exercise, as well as spaces for resting, drinking fountains, and spaces in the shade and in the sun. To reinforce the idea of continuity in the design of these play areas throughout the park, the projects will use the same vocabulary and materials. In developing the fencing for the children’s areas, we tried to use topographical and landscape strategies in order to minimize the effect of confinement, fostering instead the feeling of playing in the countryside, without sacrificing security.