Madrid, geographic center of the Iberian Peninsula and Spain’s capital city since 1562, is currently experiencing a renewed commitment to urban revitalization and enhancement. The Rio Manzanares Recuperacion Margenes park project exemplifies this effort. Framed as a reclamation and transformation of the Rio Manzanares and its edges, the project will result in a 7.6 kilometer Linear Park that aspires to be a draw for the city’s inhabitants and a vibrant new urban amenity in what will have once been an underutilized and neglected area of the city.
Our master plan scheme recognizes the significance of this revitalization effort and its potential to be a catalyst for the rejuvenation of surrounding neighborhoods. Situated just outside the old city adjacent to the historic Calle de Toledo, our project proposes an innovative 21st century urban environment that will become the keystone of redevelopment along Rio Manzanares, a connection between the new river corridor and the city, and an expression of the vision behind the river’s transformation. Through thoughtful intervention and creative development, the URM project will capitalize on this unique opportunity to transform the historic perception of the river and its neighboring areas as barrier into an experience of the river and its neighboring areas as conduit or connective tissue that links together disjointed parts of the city.
Broadly understood, the URM project has developed around three primary principles or objectives:
• Informed by a belief in the city as both expression of and armature for collective human experience, the project proposes a systemic strategy for urban development that is integrative and holistic in approach and that, like the city itself, emphasizes the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts;
• This systemic approach facilitates development of a design that amplifies the positive impact and resonance of the Rio Manzanares Recuperacion Margenes park project by forging increased connectivity and accessibility between the river, the Park, the city center and outlying areas, yielding a generative tissue—or architectural DNA—that stimulates further sympathetic development along the Rio Manzanares and in the city of Madrid;
• This increased connectivity and accessibility enables the development of an armature for a rich and inclusive urban experience that provides inhabitants of the city with a diverse mix of natural, civic and cultural amenities.
All of these objectives are interrelated and realized in a design that will achieve a complete integration of program, architecture, urban design, and context all woven into a seamless whole.
URBAN ORGANIZATION
A systemic strategy
Ours is a systemic approach that builds upon organizational and spatial principles that are integrative and connective—quite the opposite of what one finds in a typical development of this nature. Distinct from a suburban model, which estranges the domestic from the public sphere, our design creates a new multivalent, living urban space that will provide its users with the stimulation and sensory richness that so defines the urban experience of Madrid.
Our design capitalizes on the unique attributes of the site: its waterfront, its hillside character and its surrounding context. By working deliberately to sculpt land and building forms into a coherent relationship with the existing urban fabric and by responding to the naturally advantageous site conditions, our scheme prioritizes open space and creates a multi-layered, three-dimensional urban organization that emphasizes connectivity and the symbiotic interaction between water, landscape, building, and program. By integrating zones typically thought of as discrete, water forms, landforms, built forms and program work together to form a hybridized contemporary vision for a new urban typology.
Inherent in our systemic approach is the provision of a flexible framework that recognizes and facilitates the fluid nature of a development of this scale and complexity. While the project provides a comprehensive vision, it has also been conceived as an eminently flexible and divisible system that can adjust in response to changing programmatic needs, market demands, and economic forces without compromising the project’s integrity, quality and character.
Flows and Steps
Two complementary and interdependent organizational systems influence and direct the overall framework and formal character of the project “Flows,” or deliberately defined and distributed streams of open space and circulation corridors, take their cue from the meandering river itself and metaphorically extend the river and the park into the site and beyond. “Steps,” or terraced passages, work in conjunction and harmony with the “flows,” ordering and rationalizing their more organic nature with a system that references the gridded urban fabric of Madrid into the site. Together, these systems provide a strategy for manipulating both built form and terrain, negotiating a synergistic relationship between River and City and establishing a framework to accommodate a variety of uses.
Flows and steps guide, influence and direct pedestrian and vehicular circulation, built form, program distribution and landscape integration, establishing continuous, uninterrupted access, experience and use of the newly developed area. The demarcation of flows and steps facilitates a range of options for traversing the site: Pathways wind along the Manzanares Park; hybrid bridge buildings provide conduits across the river; broad green spaces and open spaces enable movement and recreation; compressed circulation defines the vibrant urban experience of the central plaza; stepped corridors ease movement up the sloped hillside site into the adjacent neighborhoods, towards the historical city center and back again.
Integration and Connectivity
URM establishes many levels of connection with the surrounding context and greater Madrid, positioning the project as both destination and journey. Our scheme creates a focal node at the center of the proposed linear park, pulling green space from the waterfront into the site, towards the Puerta de Toledo and the old city beyond. The project’s perimeter buildings frame the existing avenues and are scaled to complement the surrounding residential context. At ground level, a rich mix of residential, retail, and service spaces activate the streetscape and integrate with the surrounding neighborhood. Our design constructs organizations and structures that promote social interaction without compromising the sanctity of the individual dwelling. Strategically located and articulated circulation paths/streets, urban plazas, and green space provide important informal and formal gathering spaces that cultivate a sense of community.
Amenities
The URM project proposes a rich and inclusive urban experience whose character will enhance and complement the surrounding context of Madrid. Our holistic understanding of interrelationships between programmatic zones maximizes advantageous use of the site. This dynamic urban destination will be characterized by dense, mixed-use programs strategically distributed to maximize connectivity, integration and shared use of civic and cultural amenities. This heterogeneous and synergistic blend of building, program and landscape are created at a variety of densities and scales to define the project and correspond with the site’s unique attributes: its topography, its river front, and its rich urban texture.
Our site strategy balances open space with dense concentrations of cultural, residential, commercial and educational development as follows:
Open Space
In an effort to strengthen the new development’s connection to the surrounding context, our design prioritizes open space as a first principle and bequeaths upon the community three primary zones and several varieties of public space:
• A public green and destination park along the riverfront accommodates civic and cultural uses and seamlessly connects to and extends the City’s linear park;
• An urban plaza at the center of the site providing an open space typology that is familiar and reminiscent of plazas elsewhere in the city;
• Beyond the urban plaza and serving the upper developmental zone is a terraced public green space that faces the Plaza de Francisco Morano and the Puerta de Toledo beyond, further connecting the URM development with the existing urban fabric of Madrid.
Weaving through, around and under the buildings, the open spaces are conceived as an extension of and gateway to both the Rio Manzanares and the city center. These open spaces serve as connective tissue that ties the project’s residential, commercial, cultural and civic uses into a singular and cohesive whole, accommodating both active and passive occupation of the site.
Cultural
Complementing and working in tandem with the public/open space, this project conceives a series of cultural zones and buildings as gifts to the city. Most prominent are the two hybrid bridge-buildings that span the Rio Manzanares. These bridge-buildings demarcate and appropriate a swath of land on the river’s edges, which in conjunction with the bridges provide an armature for cultural program. Possible attractions for this cultural park include exhibition space, restaurants, cafes, seating areas and a water park. Bounded by the bridges, the public green at the bend in the Rio Manzanares is complemented by a reflecting pool and designed water feature that pulls the river into the site establishing a controlled edge and recreation zone for adjacent residents and inhabitants of the city at large.
Residential & Commercial
A combination of low-rise and tower typologies allow us to prioritize open space and connectivity while generating a diverse and varied urban fabric rich with spatial, aesthetic and experiential possibilities. Residential “ribbon” buildings weave through the site, define its boundaries and relate to the scale of the surrounding residential neighborhood.
Two towers—one residential and one office—punctuate the contextual perimeter buildings at the curve in the Rio Manzanares and at the project’s urban entry point, strategically located to capitalize on site and topography. A commercial galleria, framed by public plazas at each end, anchors the site at the river’s edge and doubles as connective device and circulation corridor that encourages pedestrian flows through the site.
Educational
One of our first priorities is to build a new school on the site. Inspired by our longstanding commitment to education and interest in the pedagogical impact of architecture as a social agenda, we will endeavor to develop a school that stimulates and inspires learning and curiosity. The new facility will replace an existing school building that is currently located in the center of the proposed development and that is being moved from its current location in order to establish fluid, uninterrupted connectivity between the upper and lower development zones of the URM. The new facility will expand the school’s functionality, increase student capacity and enhance the educational environment. In addition to providing a state of the art facility, the new school zone will provide students with access to a protected green space that will be exclusively prioritized for school use.
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Our scheme envisions a community that functions as a “living machine” by incorporating a range of low energy, high environmental quality planning and design initiatives and ecologically responsive landscapes. Ours is a holistic design approach that prioritizes and optimizes quality of life for occupants and users and strives to contribute to the conservation of the environment through the intelligent utilization of resources.
PHASING
While we have designed the scheme as an integrated system, we have strategically considered the logistics of phased construction and distributed ownership. The incremental phasing strategy maximizes flexibility and allows for a logical, organic development of the site. Self-contained, distinct components, each with parking and access to green space, will be constructed in phases, as detailed in our proposal. Conceived as working tool, the project’s organizational and formal strategy establishes a fluid framework that can adjust in response to changing programmatic needs, market demands, and economic forces without compromising the integrity of the overall quality and character of the development.
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