Park, Barcelona

Sagrera Park, to be constructed above the route of the high-speed train through Barcelona, is an exceptional project not only because of its scale, but also by virtue of its social, infrastructural and green landscaping complexity. The client (a consortium of the city council and the Spanish railways) was keen to avoid the kind of megalomaniac gesture inherent to this scale, and consequently obliged entrants in the international competition to work in teams of three, on the understanding that at a later stage each firm would be responsible for one section of the project.

Given their natural landscape style of work, it is unsurprising that Dutch firm West 8 and Barcelona firm aldayjover, should have sought each other out for this occasion. West 8, in true Dutch tradition, is thoroughly versed in the manipulation of urban and natural landscapes, as well as having just successfully completed a park above a main road in Madrid. Iñaki Alday and Margarita Jover are best known for their landscape-urban design work in Zaragoza (Park de Aguas at Expo 2008 and the new tramline), as well as their intervention in the centre of Ibiza (A10 #23) and for their ability to use vegetation as an essential component of the project. RCR, based in the provincial Catalan city Olot, is by far the most architectural of the three firms, but their best projects are those in which the built fabric engages in an intense relationship with the landscape (as in their athletics track in Olot, A10 #4).

On the geological divide between the Collserola hills and the Besos valley, where a canal and a road ran in Roman times, the winning project proposes a wooded, soft, almost idyllic park. What was already in historical times a connection between the town and its hinterland will now become a green finger leading to the new high-speed train station in the centre of the city. This park is an emphatic departure from the 'hard squares' that have for so long defined the image of public space in Barcelona and that have become increasingly unpopular with the inhabitants. This is not the only front on which it marks a break with the recent urban design past, for it also refrains from the design of forms in favour of a 'strategy' that entails working with vegetation. In terms of atmosphere, it is closest to the urban parks of the 19th century and displays northern European influences in the open fields and floral plantings, something hitherto unknown in the Catalan capital, where people are not accustomed to picnic or play football in the park. As such it will be a unique park for the city.

On one point the project is quite explicit, and that is water management. The groundwater seepage in the underground train station, the water used to wash the trains and water from the infrequent but heavy rains, will be canalized (partly by means of artificial height differences), purified, stored and used to water the park. In Barcelona's dry climate the lavish use of vegetation makes such technical measures a must.