Plaza de España: Common Green

Location: Madrid, Spain

Client: Madrid City Council

Date: 2016

Area: 50.753 m2

Budget: Undisclosed

Team credits:

AZPML: Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Amaya Luzarraga, Ivaylo Nachev, Diego Grisalena, Blanca Munoz, Irene Abellan, Federica Campeotto

Structure Engineering: ARUP

Renders: SBDA

The restructuring of Plaza de España is a great opportunity to create a big urban park in the city centre that will act as a green lung of Madrid. Our proposal wants to create a continuous 100Ha green park that links Debod Park, Sabatini Gardens and the Royal Palace Gardens.

The project aims to reflect on the meaning of public parks inside the city at a time when more than a half of the world population lives in an urban setting. In this context, we believe that urban parks can have a different role than in the cities of the XIX century.

The contemporary role of the urban park is to be a complex natural island. An island that is alive and exposes nature to a dense urban environment. The contemporary urban park ensures that the city preserves the wealth of natural systems and can demand to hold them inside. Our park proposal presents green events, where the vegetation is managed and laid out in a didactic fashion, and where its qualities are exploited to generate a unique space that changes over time.

The park, a complex and rich ecosystem, is formalized as an expression of Madrid’s own potential: the park as an institution of urban culture. To design the park we need also a timing management plan, with a communication strategy and a cultural and educational strategy that qualifies it as a museum space.