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/ parks / residential area / down town / rular area / contests
/ master plan / park / Spain K/R Architects, announced recently that the firm has completed the master plan for the 100-acre (40-hectare) Parque de Levante in Murcia, Spain. The plan, which reinvents the concept of a museum-park explores the relationship between art and culture as a generator of creativity and education, as well as economic dynamism and tourism. The park will serve the Mediterranean region as a major art destination. K/R recently presented the master plan at City Hall in Murcia. Additional images and descriptive text follows the break.
/ Currently, the park occupies a vast parcel of land along the Segura River within walking distance of the city’s historic center. The master plan envisions the site as a sustainable and bio-diverse open air museum – the largest in Spain and one of the largest worldwide – devoted to extensive land-based art installations, and a 485,000 square feet (45,000 square meter) campus for a new Museum of Art, Design and the Environment. The mission of the museum will be to support and expand on the open-air installations by collecting, preserving and exhibiting works by artists and designers that deal with the natural environment in new and innovative ways. The design of the museum campus and its buildings will be determined by an architectural competition to be initiated later this year /
/ K/R‘s design interweaves diverse landscape elements with civic amenities throughout the site, including a 1.9-kilometer -long shaded promenade that meanders through groves of existing citrus trees and new plantings. According to John Keenen,K/R‘s lead designer on the project, the land bridge provides a sculptural presence that unifies the park, connecting the two east and west halves of the site while providing elevated views of the historic urban fabric and the landscape of the outlying areas. The master plan also includes proposals for the restoration of the Segura riverbanks, a center for food and agriculture, an event place to host large scale gatherings /
/ The master plan also includes proposals for the restoration of the Segura riverbanks, a center for food and agriculture, an event place to host large scale gatherings such as the yearly ‘La Feria’ festival, and an artist residency program, to name a few /
/ park / master plan / USA Positioned on the edge of the Federal Channel and Lake Michigan, Erie Street Plaza by StossLU is a new public space that serves to connect downtown Milwaukee to a newly revitalized outer zone of the city. It is part of a three mile long green corridor that promotes activity along the city’s reclaimed waterfront for public use. From the project’s inception, its form progressed under the principle of maximizing programmatic, environmental, and ecologic variety within the space while recalling the site’s industrial past and surroundings through use of three primary elements.
Viewing the park as a “flexible field” was key for Stoss in creating a design that could behave in a way that would parallel its ultimate use. That being said, aesthetic and built variety is attained within the park by the formal manipulation of three elements or “hybrid ecologies.” The radiant grove, the flexible field, and the steel marsh step down from the edge of the site towards the water. Each distinct zone houses varying program, views, and ecologic characteristics.
The highly variable ecologic opportunity provided by the site’s proximity to Lake Michigan present a further degree of flux within the site. The steel marsh, located behind a slitted corrugated steel bulkhead, allows for the penetration of water into the site in a way that can restrict access to its lower portion depending on water levels within the lake. This reclaimed softedge of the water restores a visual marker of the shifting environment and promotes ecological growth at the site.
/ master plan / park / Sweden Sarpsborg is a green, flat and calm piece of South Norway and a traditional stopover for travellers on the route to and from Sweden. In 2004, the Norwegian Highway Department together with the Regional Government approached Saunders for a new project in the area; uniquely however, without having predetermined the commission’s particular needs. Focusing on the site and aiming to identify its challenges and advantages in order to define its problems and opportunities, Saunders worked closely with the client, not only to develop the optimum design solution, but also the project’s own brief. We discussed what we needed and the architecture came out of that, he explains.
As Sarpsborg is one of the first tastes of Norway the travellers from Sweden experience, it was important for the client that they would be able to slow down and spend time discovering the surrounding nature. The local forest and coastline form a beautiful, yet largely unknown part of the country. The neighbouring highway’s speed and noise only enhance the traveller’s need for a break and reconnection with nature, so a green resting space was on the top of the list. A low walled ramp spirals around the rest area, defining the 2000 sq m area’s limits, while spring-flowering fruit trees adorn the courtyard. Within it, Saunders designed seven small pavilions working with graphic designer Camilla Holcroft, showcasing information on the local rock carvings from the Bronze Age, an exhibition, which continues on the ramp’s walls.
/ high line park / USA The High Line, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks & Recreation, was the former West Side industrial railway. It is a 1.45 mile-long elevated, steel structure built in the 1930s for freight trains; the last train ran on it in 1980. Stretching across the west side of the city, it runs from Gansevoort Street, in the Meatpacking District, through the West Chelsea gallery neighborhood, and ends at 34th Street, next to the Jacob Javits Convention Center. In 2003, an open competition was held to convert the existing infrastructure into a public park.
The winning proposal by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro includes over a dozen access points to the elevated park. Whichever entrance is activated, a key component will attract users to spend time and explore the complete park. For instance, enter a little past 14th St. and enjoy the sundeck and water feature; enter close to 23rd St. to lounge on the open lawn and seating steps; or enter past 26th St. to enjoy the viewing area. Inspired by the wild seeded landscape left after the line had been abandoned, the team created a paving system that encourages natural growth which creates a ‘pathless’ landscape. ”Through a strategy of agritecture - part agriculture, part architecture – the High Line surface is digitized into discrete units of paving and planting which are assembled along the 1.5 miles into a variety of gradients from 100% paving to 100% soft, richly vegetated biotopes,” explained DS + Renfro. This undefined and unobtrusive environment allows the public to meander and experience the park as they wish.
Before the new landscape could take form atop the High Line, every component of the structure was tested and treated to ensure its structural strength. As each piece of rail was removed, it was marked and mapped so that later, it could be returned to its original location as an integrated planting piece. Energy-efficient LED lights gently illuminate the park’s pathways and allow the eyes to adjust to the ambient light of the surrounding city sky. Lights installed on the underside of the High Line illuminate the sidewalk below. For the vast garden, soil was delivered and distributed to specific areas and more than one hundred different species of plants, selected from nurseries along the East Coast, were planted by a team of horticulturists to match the plans created by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and planting designer Piet Oudolf.
Metropol Parasol / Spain The project becomes the new icon for Sevilla, – a place of identification and to articulate Sevillas role as one of Spains most fascinating cultural destinations. “Metropol Parasol� explores the potential of the Plaza de la Encarnacion to become the new contemporary urban centre. Its role as a unique urban space within the dense fabric of the medieval inner city of Sevilla allows for a great variety of activities such as memory, leisure and commerce. A highly developed infrastructure helps to activate the square, making it an attractive destination for tourists and locals alike.
The “Metropol Parasol” scheme with its large structures offers an archeological site, a farmers market, an elevated plaza, multiple bars and restaurants underneath and inside the parasols, as well as a panorama terrace on the very top of the parasols. Realized as an innovative timber-construction with a polyurethan coating, the parasols grow out of the archeological excavation site into a contemporary landmark. The columns become prominent points of access to the museum below as well as to the plaza and panorama deck above, defining a unique relationship between the historical and the contemporary city. “Metropol Parasols” mixused character initiates a dynamic development for culture and commerce in the heart of Sevilla.
/ Social Houses / Residentail / Spain The purpose of the project was to design and build state subsidized housing in Cerredo (Asturias), a mining town located in the very heart of the Cantabrian Mountains, where no residential construction had been made for over 25 years.
The project had two stages that materialized in two perpendicular buildings forming an L shape. In the first stage we undertook the biggest building, which faces the road that crosses the town. The volumetric we propose has an angular shape. It is a geometry crystallized from some elementary laws that are given by the town-planning regulations. The formal result is something halfway between a petrified object, a mountain’s shape and a disturbing organism floating over the mountainside.
Each of the apartments is different in size, floor plan distribution, location of its gallery and in its roof’s configuration. All of them enjoy cross ventilation and breathtaking views of Asturias’ craggy landscape. The project’s nature as object is emphasized by the way the ground floor is approached: this has been set back along its perimeter, reinforcing the idea of a “floating body.”
Urban Planning Contests Gowanus Connections is an international ideas competition hosted by Gowanus by Design, inviting speculation on the value of urban development of post-industrial urban lands, and the possibility of dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that engages with the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding watershed. The competition focuses on reusing the industrial space and orchestrating a clean-up for the canal. This competition is a first of a series which will explore the possibilities of the future of the Gowanus Canal and its effects on the people that work and live around it. The Gowanus Lowline: Connections competition produced 98 entries, of which six were selected. First Prize was awarded to “Gowanus Flowlands� by Tyler Caine, Luke Carnahan, Ryan Doyle, and Brandon Specketer. Second place winners, along with four honorable mentions can be seen here after the break.