Diagonal Mar was one of the largest projects in Europe a decade ago: an 80-acre property on the Mediterranean waterfront (linked with the Universal Forum of Cultures, held in 2004).
Houston-based real-estate giant Hines had acquired the property in 1996, and in turn commissioned global design and management firms like AECOM, EDAW and Roth to plan, design and develop the buildings and open spaces. Diagonal Mar is a reflection of what you get with state-of-the-art globalization.
.
From Barcelona Field Studies Centre
The master plan called for a multi-use project:
- five independent residential communities containing four buildings and approximately 1,500 units each
- a 220-store regional shopping mall
- three high-rise office buildings
- three hotels
- one of Europe’s largest convention centers.
Now completed, over $1 billion of construction value was realized in office, residential, hotel and retail projects between 1996 and 2007.
The third largest park in Barcelona was the centerpiece (map here):
.
Parc Diagonal Mar and surrounding development
.
In September 2002, the 34-acre park was opened, credited to EDAW, Atlanta and EMBT Arquitectes of Barcelona – Enric Miralles, in particular.
Providing a gateway to the sea for locals and visitors, Parc Diagonal Mar features play areas, lakes, a waterfall, an outdoor café, a fountain and viewing mounds, all linked by paths that lead to the beach. …
Ecology played a meaningful role in the park’s design. Porous pavements minimise stormwater runoff. The use of native plant materials allows for reduced irrigation and pesticide use. A regional retention pond and sections of shoreline edged with aquatic plants provide first flush cleansing of stormwater, as well as a habitat for indigenous marine and bird species.
.
There’s a rather revealing line in the above description: ” The park is conceived as an abstract tapestry in plan view, and is enjoyed from above by high-rise residents.”
In 2005, Parc Diagonal Mar won a General Design Award of Honor from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Clearly, they liked it: ““Best constructed wetlands I’ve ever seen . . .centerpiece of a very large development project . . . this is a big success.”
The plan of Parc Diagonal Mar is a playful and exuberant mixture of pavements, water and plantings meant to evoke a canvas of modern art. … The design incorporates a number of engaging, playful, interactive elements such as the musical squares, sculptural mist fountains, custom playscapes and unique seating elements.
These, combine with the open space and water elements to create an exciting and memorable user-friendly park. The design process incorporated significant collaboration between the private developer and client and the public agencies for parks and urban design.
The park clearly addresses the main purposes for which it is intended: recreation, strolling, connection to the beach, and stormwater retention.
.
It photographs beautifully:
Sustainability was a key concept at the time of design. “Water is the backbone of the park and vegetation conditions in it: they are used for irrigation groundwater. It means that rainwater is stored in underground wells housed, and then made available to the plants and flower through the tubular structures (similar to the ends of arachnids). These pipes run around the park like the pots are decorated with ceramics.”
And like any fashionable idea taken to an extreme, Parc Diagonal Mar has one over-the-top expression: the tubes.
.
.
Like a piece of conceptual art designed by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the tubes threaten to take over the park in their determination to deliver water. They are not friendly.
Too much of the park, indeed, feels like it’s meant to be passively observed, admired, photographed, just as I and the few others present were doing. Some were there on demand of their dogs. And a couple of runners, with no clear route to take, were making it up as they went along.
.
.
There are a few ambiguous entrances to an otherwise fenced-off, if gorgeous, space, and it’s hard to know whether it is used at all as a way to connect upland residential areas with the beach.
The Project for Public Spaces was even more scathing, adding it to their Hall of Shame:
Diagonal Mar is good planning, architecture and landscape architecture in only the narrowest senses of these disciplines. We like to think this park was designed by lawyers, who have taken all preventative measures necessary to ensure nothing can happen here. …
It is an accomplishment to have spent this much energy and money and not have created any spaces that have the potential to take on a life of their own, to support cultural, social or economic activity or to simply attract more people.
That may be a precipitously harsh judgment. Like anything new, it takes time for people to discover it, experience it, eventually love it. I’d like to know how the residents use it, and what others think. To me, it seemed over-designed, rather like the Hinge Park at Olympic Village – a case of too many mandates and, perhaps, too much money to be spent too quickly.
We should all have such problems.
The Hinge Park is also a constructed wetland. It would seem to be quite small in comparison. It will be used quite differently in the future once the adjacent K-7 school is constructed on the easterly edge and the next neighbourhood west all the way to Cambie is completed. It may be over designed, but I would wager that it is used much more intensely.
I dream of the day Vancouver builds public parks and spaces like these
I walked that park Gordon and was repelled. I agree with the PPS critique entirely. There is not a single space to dwell. On the hot day i was there, shade, water, a cool drink, people to watch, places to play, to read a book, were entirely absent. A gigantic park with not a single place to actually BE.
There is no spatial definition at all because sculptures replace space. Always a tragic error.
I think there are some similarities with Hinge Park. Hinge park also obliterates too much space with too many objects, both sculptural and verdant. But Hinge Park is a much more modest and therefor attractive project. Nice place for kids, for dog walking, for looking for ducks, an intimate scale. The Barcelona park was designed for, and succeeds for, none of these things.
What an obscene waste of space, money, and opportunity. Its an object lesson in what Vancouver should never do, and a cause for celebration that we have not yet been overly tempted.
Cruising around on street view, the site reminds me of Le Corbusier more than anything else. Problematic in both scale and connectivity. The lack of human proportion or adjoining streetscape, the looming towers, plus the rather austere fences, make it all appear rather unfriendly. It is also entirely boxed in by arterials, including this one running through the middle: http://goo.gl/maps/XfRwy
Basically the polar opposite of, say, Hyde Park.