Botanical Garden of Barcelona

This project is located on a 14 hectares site on the mountain of Montjuïc, in front of the Olympic grounds. It had been used for different types of waste disposal for the last 100 years and for this reason funds were requested from the European Commission in order to recycle the area and convert it into the new botanical garden of Barcelona.

The design was based on strict criteria in terms of both sustainability and the elimination of physical barriers. The reinforced earth of the mountain itself was used to build the new topography. The materials used are recyclable and environmentally friendly and the integrated irrigation system is controlled by a central CPU, which activates the different electro-valves by means of a radio signal. Photovoltaic energy is used to run this as well as the emergency lighting system.
The planting criteria, which groups together plants of similar climates, is also made sustainable by grouping the homoclimatic floras of California, Chile, South Africa, Australia and the eastern and western Mediterranean.
With the intention being to transform the garden into an important scientific, pedagogic and leisure centre, its layout was based on botanical concerns and by making use of the concept of morphologic convergence. The method used in the project ends up assuming the fractal dimension of nature itself, achieving a synthesis between the ecological balance of the planted areas and the artificiality that provides the built infrastructure for the site.

The logic of the intervention is produced by the absence of scale. The final dimension of the intervention is alien to the design mechanisms employed and thus the original layout and size are not needed to develop the project. The use of the triangular grid shapes the landscape while at the same time it resolves the complex requirements of the project such as drainage and circulation.
In this way it was the place itself that provided the basis for the intervention, suggesting the forms of the new landscape from its morphologic and topographical conditions.

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