Plan n’UNDO | Plaza España 

Location: Plaza de España, Madrid, Spain

Year: 2016

Workframe:  Plaza España Competition organised by Madrid City Council

#Public Space #Stay

The proposal is based on the definition of essential actions with minimum intervention and maximum impact on the nearby scale and immediate response, but without giving up the definition of the intervention plan that would be necessary to face for a more ambitious improvement of the urban environment. Finally, it establishes the bases of a broader strategy for the whole of Madrid’s historic centre, identifying new strategic points of desirable intervention.

In the face of new building interventions, where the renovation imposes to make a clean sweep of the place, an adjusted and measured intervention in the pre-existence is proposed, which forces a deep and detailed analysis of the reality, its dysfunctions and problems, as well as the existing opportunities, in order to act in an accurate way, only when and where it is pertinent.

Intervention strategy:

THE IMPRESSIBLE | The Square

Among the possible approaches from which the square can be analysed, priority has been chosen:

-The perspective of the users | The historical evolution of the place | The mobility | The accessibility | The vegetation

THE NECESSARY | The Environment

Mobility, Plaza España, from island to joint.

-Pedestrian Flow | Bicycle Flow | Road Traffic Flow

THE DESIRE | The City and the Historical Centre.

It is proposed to recover the PLACES as meeting points, as necessary gaps within an urban fabric consolidated almost without modification since the nineteenth century.

Re-naturalization | Urban heterogeneous network | Progressive and gradual minimization of private road traffic and the scalextric of Bailén | Strengthening of the NETWORK of human-scale routes through transversal-boulevards | Strengthening of the historical centre through action on its perimeter