SHORT TAKES_lub
Transforming public space through landscape design
J. Bellmunt, 07 de Juliol de 2008.

New mechanized access in Santa Coloma de Gramanet
The basic goal of this project is to put in place a pathway of escalators and mechanized ramps that winds through the city’s densest and hilliest neighborhoods. Our main focuses of attention are the areas where we can improve the connections between public transit systems (bus and metro) and residential areas.
One confronts functional and geometric constraints when attempting to introduce ribbons of movement, all the while striving to unify the space in formal terms, from the perspective of the attentive gaze and with sensitivity to the landscaping.
For all their varied requirements, our interventions share this overarching goal of unification. Unification can be defined by the geometric clarity that emerges from the logic of the escalators and their relationship to the constraints imposed upon them, from an awareness of the points of singularity the new pathways engender, with the sustainable construction of talud-tableros, like true ecological islands.
In this way introducing mechanized access becomes a pretext—by building tiny fragments of a new, contemporary space— for reviving a degraded stretch of the city and a handful of forgotten interstitial spaces.
Salou’s Greenway System and Botanical Garden
The new botanical garden and park in residential sectors 4 and 5 grew out of a desire to turn a markedly degraded area into an entryway to the city. It is a new strategic space destined to foster new residential uses and offer an alternative to existing tourist offerings, as well as to forge a network out of several high-quality public spaces that will extend all the way to the sea. As structural elements of the proposal, both projects bet on the consolidation of agricultural partitions along preexisting routes and a modern reinvention of the landscape.
In the case of the botanical garden, by turning a nondescript area into a garden specializing in acclimatized palm trees and Mediterranean plant life we recover a greenway for the city. With the goal of consolidating it into a public park, we capitalize on the pedagogical and recreational possibilities and have designed a system of small plazas, seating areas, and greenways that respond to the topography, reclaiming the very gaps in the man-made terrain.
Pedestrians walk around the garden on its multiple paths and water follows alongside them, appearing and disappearing to highlight particular points of interest.