A New Connection Safer, Healthier and More Sustainable

The project is located in an interstitial space between towns, on the confluence between the Collserola and Marina mountain ranges, touching the Rec Comtal and Besòs natural spaces.

CONNECTING THE CITIES

The project’s goal is to arrange and improve the pedestrian connection between the Vallbona and Can Sant Joan districts, slightly regularizing the trace and the slope of the existing path to solve the lack of connection between adjacent neighborhoods. Committing to soft mobility and a biophillic city: healthier, cleaner, and more accessible for people. The new 175m long passageway, is traced with gentle slopes for pedestrians in a renatured environment, acting as an overlook over the Besos river. The path stitches together the pedestrian urban network with the metropolitan free-space system through one of the shortest possible connections between Barcelona and Montcada.

Defining the standard section and choosing a limited material palette, a complex project is solved in a simple manner, paying attention to the specificity of the place and adapting to each spot in order to maintain existing vegetation and slopes in the most respectful way possible. The esplanade adjacent to the Primer de Maig square is arranged with fruit trees, creating an urban threshold where an insect hotel will be installed.

RESPECTING NATURE

The pier like catwalk on stilts maintains the place’s dynamic allowing for the crossing of fauna and maintaining the continuity of water in its natural runoff.

The 2m wide path avoids large land movements maintaining the site’s orography and respecting the existing pine trees.

MANAGING RAINFALL

The areas closer to the urban fabric where the orography is favorable allows for a dike like path with a gabion wall, retaining and laminating the surface run off water favoring the stability of the slope created by disaggregated slate strata and illegal dumps.

In the new door-to-door urban mobility paradigm, this new path must become a new more secure, healthier, and comfortable connection between both municipalities. A space destined to be a leisure path, a metropolitan link, and a natural lookout for everyone.

Project Data

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE Batlleiroig

AUTHORS Batlleiroig Arquitectura. Enric Batlle Durany, Joan Roig i Duran, Iván Sánchez Fabra – Architect
TEAM Clàudia Amías Roget – Architect and landscape architect / Clara Terradellas Rosell, Marta Sanz Cuso, Laura Florentín Aragón – Architect / Elisabeth Torregrosa Avilés – Building engineer / Dolors Feu – Agricultural engineer and landscape architect
COLLABORATORS SBS Simón i Blanco – Engineering
PROMOTER Consorci del Besòs
LOCATION Montcada i Reixac, Barcelona
CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Copcisa
PROJECT START DATE 2019
FINISH DATE 2020
TOTAL AREA 7608 m2
AWARDS XV Bienal Española de Arquitectura y Urbanismo – Montcada
BUDGET 922831,14€
PHOTOGRAPHY © Jordi Surroca
VIDEO © Pol Jordà Escursell