South-east Coastal Park

One of the main demands was to connect the city edge with the beach, a strip to be developed in front of the park, that would be located at an 11 metre drop in level. The citizens would in this case recover visual as well as physical access to the sea along this area of the waterfront.

This was therefore the primary task of the park: to link the city level with the waterfront. The brief also required that the park would host outdoor events that would benefit from the spectacular views of the sea as a backdrop. Proposed as an alternative to the rational geometry artificial and linear, consistent or contradictory and organic geometrical approximations that intend to attempt the picturesque qualities of nature, the design for the park explores strategies that produce organisationally complex landscapes. These emerge through the production of artificially generated topographies through a mediated integration of rigorous modelled orders. The organisational prototype is borrowed from a frequent element in coastal areas: sand dunes. They are a form, a material organisation with little internal structure, merely sand shaped by wind. The programmatic distribution is fundamentally based on the analysis of the different sport and leisure activities which the park had to host and the harsh environmental conditions of this exposed location.

The park s topography provides open air auditoriums and spaces for events and activities, wind protection and suitable habitats for vegetation. The topography has also been designed to control the views and sightlines for the visitor.