Nou Parc: the project to "renaturalise" Barcelona.
Does Barcelona need more green areas? Are the current ones enough? With high levels of pollution, cities need more lungs, areas where citizens rest on asphalt and can breathe "some clean air". Barcelona has the sea, the Parc de la Ciutadella, and the Sierra de Collserola, yes, but are they enough for a population of more than 5 million inhabitants?
The ON-A architecture studio in Barcelona thinks not, that Barcelona needs a new remodeling of its green areas, much more now that we are facing an unprecedented pandemic. For this reason, it has presented a project called 'Nou Parc', which follows in the footsteps of other international cities.
“A topography similar to that of the ‘Nou Parc’ project can be seen in some non-winning proposals that were submitted for the creation of the Tokyo 2020 Games Olympic Stadium . This is the case of DGT Arquitectos or the proposal of GMP architekten. In both cases,** a stadium is covered with a green blanket that allows the transit of people** and creates a new urban park in the middle of the city. Another similar example is the proposal for Craterre-Montpellier Arena by the architect Giovanni Vaccarini”, Jordi Fernández and Eduardo Gutiérrez, the authors of the proposal told Traveler.es.
And that green mantle would cover the Camp Nou.
His idea is to "renature" the Camp Nou and its surrounding areas , raising its topography and creating a 26-hectare green mantle, while keeping the stadium and the houses in the area operational.
“We, being architects from Barcelona and having a world-famous stadium like the Nou Camp, which is going to be remodeled, we wanted to make this proposal as a reflection . We think that such a project would be a new milestone in the era of stadiums and a new way of understanding their architecture. In recent years we have seen stadium projects with spectacular facades, iconic buildings, but we think that now the priorities have to be different and that architecture of this type, with this philosophy, can combine public and private interests”, they add.
Parc Nou opens the debate to reflection: does Barcelona need more green areas?
Obviously it would benefit the city, but what do they think about it? “To give us an idea, the Parque del Retiro in Madrid has more than three times the surface area of the Ciutadella, which is Barcelona's great urban park. The benefits are evident.** It improves the quality of life of citizens, quality leisure spaces are gained for walking, relaxation and sports that we have seen as so necessary in this new post-covid era.**
And they add: "Our proposal is a necessary reflection in this new era, We have not delved into the feasibility of the project or the time it would take to carry it out. We just want the citizens and, above all, the politicians, who are the ones who make the decisions, to keep in mind that we must be very attentive to any opportunity to gain green space”.
Although the project has not been presented to the Barcelona City Council, they have wanted to go further.** To carry it out, they have thought of native plants and trees, they also believe that it should be designed with low water consumption.** The same topography would be responsible for collecting rainwater and would benefit irrigation in that sense.
“Today we have the technology to consume water efficiently, which is the great green debate. Without an efficient consumption of resources, it makes no sense to propose a new green area".