06 LINEAR PARK

The narrow stretch of site for the park is located in Sarria, Barcelona. These narrow site is a concrete underpass with stretches of greenary on either sides. The aim of the proposal was to design an urban park with a freeflowing arrangement of spaces for public activities such as kids’ play areas, lush green areas for picnics, recreation trails, canopies and lighting. The park was designed with respect to its immediate context, where the site was extended to include the open areas that envelope the immediate buildings. This helped determine the organic allocation of spaces within the park.

Project Type // Planning and Landscape

Team

Mentors // Gerard Bertomeu, Marc Serra

Organic.

// Abiodun Shonibare, Arshita Ravindranathan, Bindhuja A. Reddy, Nerea Gardner Egusquizaga

Workflow // Program

Concept

The concept is to have free-flowing spaces where a medial axis would divide the park into public and semipublic zones. The main idea is to encroach the immediate context to open the site and break the linearity. One of the approaches to the design was to include the local species of lawn grass, flowering bushes and trees to create a green environment nested within the urban environment.

The main constraints while designing the park are: topography, drainage, wind direction, light and shadows, axis and circulation, and vegetation suitability.

Goals

• Create a buffer between the adjacent roads and the park

• Bringing in playfulness with colours and textures

• Creating spaces with a sense of safety

Methodology

New Terrain: Creating a new site where the site is extended, with an organic boundary

Layering: Building the site in layers with terraced slabs > cavities > intermediate site > final terrain

Analysis: Affects of the site slopes, drainage pattern, radiation, noise

Space Allocation: Defining the spaces with respect to results from the previous analyses

Path Definition: Main pedestrian axis for circulation, motorways, running tracks etc

Planting Pattern Definition: To understand the types of vegetation (grass cover-shrubstrees) using the height difference between the two surfaces (existing and proposed)

aerial view // overall site

layer 1 // terraced slabs // 450mm thick

layer 2 // cavities // 75x50mm modules layer 3 // intermediate surface // existing layer 4 // final surface // proposed site

SITE // LAYERING

Zone III picnic areas, lawns

Zone II rainwater harvesting ponds

Zone I

jogging, cycling tracks

Zone IV playground, sports areas

Zone III open air theatre

Zone II therapeutic or healing gardens

Path I

pedestrian (red coloured main axis to accentuate the paths)

Path II vehicular (mixed paving)

Entry vehicular only

Entries/exits pedestrian only // multiple

vegetation clustering // defining paths // space allocation

Design Features

Paths // Vegetation

The types of paths defined are pedestrian, tracks for jogging, cycling and walking, and motorways. The pedestrian and vehicular paths are accessed throughout the site from all four directions to reduce walking distances. The exercising tracks are placed in a slightly secluded place to separate the public and semi-public activities.

The patterning for vegetation is defined by clustering using factors like heights between intermediate and final surfaces, results from slope-drainageradiation analysis. The species were allocated using Lands Design.