ábalos & herreros

ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEX COAST PARK NORTH-EAST . sant adrià de besòs



ábalos & herreros

In the final bend of the city, whence it had relegated the most polluting services and installations, next to a rundown area, it is now thought to create one of Barcelona’s most extensive natural public spaces.

And, simultaneously, to install a number of services for energy supply, waste recollection and treatment, water storage, collectors, gas mains, etc., plus extending the former incinerator so as to include a recycling plant and an ecopark, all this converted into an emblematic political operation, an expression of the sensitivity towards environmental issues and cultural admixtures that gives content to the urban intervention into which this project is inserted (Forum 2004).
Our strategy for the projected complex starts from an actualization of the techniques of pintorescism, the construction of new multiple and intricate experiences in which the natural components –sea, wind, sun, beach, lawn, dunes, mountains, plantations- are used as material of construction and the different artificial components create geographic accidents, articulated by a circulation and stay system which crosses the complex and links it to the city, the Mediterranean and the pre-existing industrial landscape.
The resulting conglomerate is the construction of a crossbred landscape that we consider an expression of cultural complexity which today is required by the notions of nature and public.

In the remotest point from the sea, next to the Carrer Taulat, the entrance to the complex is created by a valley that is the result of the construction of an artificial mountain and landing. The mountain protects the complex from traffic noise of the coastal ring road. Its interior contains various technical systems and climbing on top of it, it permits contemplating simultaneously the park, the sea, and the city. The landing contains the recycling installations involving the former incinerator and connecting the whole with a single building made out of blue polycarbonate which emerges polarizing all the looks, materializing a first layer that filters the more aggressive industrial sight from the park.
The complex is built with a screwed steel structure creating a big air-conditioned hall. A system of galleries for guided visits is superposed. A service building which contains offices, environmental lecture room and an exhibition center in which the energy producing process is explained, complements the installation.
Not only the program – associated to recycling and new ecological sensibilities – but also by the constructive design – elemented recyclable industrial materials, minimized details, green roofs, energetic autosufficiency – and the parallel program – exhibition center, aula, viewing platform … - turn the project into a public investigation about sostenibility and its “politic” use of the infrastructures.
It is a singular proposal, an observatory which through its programme –industrial, tertiary and cultural- permits to establish bridges between cultural and landscaping contexts, between natural and artificial, making the surrounding territory comprehensible: a privileged point, the most extroverted element of the garden from where the city looks at itself.

Oficina / Arquitecto
ABALOS&HERREROS / Iñaki Ábalos, Renata Sentkiewicz, Juan Herreros
Colaboradores
Jose Maria Civit, Figueras, PGI grup Joan, Gonzalez Castellon Juanjo, Agustí Obiol, Obiol y Moya, Albert Oehlen, Martinez Capdevila Pablo, Mario Pascual, Pablo Puertas, David Sobrino, Roger Subira, Jose Torras, Wouter van Daehle, Irene Zuñiga