Inhabitat wrote about Pau Casals Square, a new geometric park designed by ACXT in Bilbao, Spain, the site of Frank Gehry’s now iconic Guggenheim Museum. The park aims to connect surrounding neighborhoods and creates a bold new place to relax, while preserving much of the site’s original character. “The striking public park consolidates an area prone to landslides and is composed of alternating triangular sections that incorporate the site’s existing rock with patches of greenery.”
Pau Casals Square is found between the Txurdínaga and Otxarcoaga districts. According to Inhabitat, the site is part of a larger set of projects the city of Bilbao has undertaken to “improve urban spaces in the city’s outlying areas, creating connections between different neighborhoods and increasing the quality of life for residents.” Neighborhoods designed in the post-war era suffer from ”poor urban infrastructure and disorderly planning, which created rocky unused spaces like this site along Jesus Galindez Avenue.” Bilbao has promoted the use of landscape architecture for urban revitalization through Bilbao Jardin 2009, an innovative urban design program (see earlier post).
ACXT approached the square’s challenges (it’s steep, rocky and prone to landslides) with a sustainable approach: preserving much of the existing site’s structure. Fast Company writes: “All those seemingly willy-nilly concete facets you see serve a purpose: The site is steep and rocky, and prone to landslides. Rather than razing it, ACXT preserved as much as they could and shored up the trickiest sections with concrete.” To make parts of more accessible to kids, Inhabitat added that an old electricity substation was turned into a children’s play area. The site was tilled with “grass, flowers, and soft rubber.”
Read the article and see more photos. Check out Fast Company for a video tour of the site.
Image credit: Inhabitat / Aitor Ortiz
