Ponència presentada a: Session 2: Post-ocupación / Post-occupancy: buildings and citie

Baeza-Server, Carles Francesc

UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC

SEAMBIOSIS in Palma de Mallorca: awarded project in Europan 13 competition, 2015

UPCommons

SEAMBIOSIS in Palma de Mallorca: awarded project in Europan 13 competition, 2016

SEAMBIOSIS in Palma de Mallorca. Awarded project in Europan 13 competition, 2016.  Carles Francesc Baeza-Server (Urban sociologist and DEA in Architecture) Palma is an ancient Mediterranean city full of history in its urban scene. The massive tourism transforms Palma in a place where the presence of the natural relationship between people, the city and the sea has disappear. The concept of mobility conducted the urban planning of Palma to an urban design made for and from the use of private vehicle. That breaks the symbiosis of the city, especially at the waterfront. The project resolves the urban fracture at the waterfront of Palma. This fracture, due to the presence of a wide motorway and the huge number of private vehicles along the promenade, is the cause of the squeezed public space for pedestrians in this zone. The new demands of public space use for the pedestrians compel to make decisions in order to civilize Palma recovering the “seambiotic” relationship between people, city and the sea through a new healthy, comfortable, wealthy and sustainable public space at the waterfront made for pedestrians, free of private vehicles, reconnecting, in a human scale, all the points of Palma and erasing boundaries. The strategies proposed to achieve this objective are composed by actions oriented to respect the natural environment, recover the green zones, have in mind the necessities of the pedestrians, the connectivity between the waterfront with any point of Palma and create new leisure spaces for people where they can experiment the emotions of pleasure, safety, fun and relax at any point of the promenade. These strategies are defined as: 1 COASTAL AXIS, 2-IN-LAND CONNECTIONS and 3 ERASING BOUNDERIES, which aim is to recover the symbiotic relationship between the pedestrian, the city and the sea through specific actions along the waterfront and its inner city connectors. These actions are related to design and recover the urban and natural connections city-to-promenade, the creation of a tramway lane alongside the promenade; enlarge, recover and improve the public space for pedestrians slimming the motorway and parking areas and the elimination of urban and architectural barriers. S1.-Costal axis: Parallel to sea and transversal connection between the opposites points of the promenade offering along it a pattern based in the reduction of the traffic flow slimming the vehicles and parking platform positioning it as much close as possible to the build row and the installation of a tramway line alongside the promenade to make easier and sustainable the people mobility. S2.-Inland connections:  This strategy consist in act at the most of the existing torrents overlapped in the urban scene, recovering them through an upgrading of these natural and urban spaces, together with the elimination and reconfiguration of the existing urban barriers between the sea side and the city at the waterfront strip, making new inland connections in a easier and logical way giving prominence to green and comfortable areas in the urban scene, expanding them and reordering the road network granting power to the pedestrians. S3.-Erasing boundaries: This strategy consist in to expand and unify both current dominion zones (Town Hall and Port Authority) and create other news areas at the waterfront, making a unique wide and comfortable platform for pedestrians where they could carry out their new demanding uses and making easier the connection between the opposite faces (backdrop build row and sea side) along the waterfront giving priority to pedestrians. This strategy is related to the optimal mobility of users on foot.   These strategies, as well, will permit to create a new urban scene based in a sustainable and environmental mobility, stretching on the time of remain of the pedestrians in a healthy and comfortable public space for pedestrians thanks to a creation of a human scale new urban and architectural spaces, promoting the presence of soft borders at ground floor instead the hard ones, where visitors and inhabitants will perform their demands of use in the public space for pedestrians in the waterfront as walking, practise sports, seating and consuming in the hotel stores promoting and enforcing the benefits of a private-public joint investment to transform the waterfront into a new place where the slow city model permits a better social-urban-and-environmental interaction. In the end: make possible, again, the lost seambiosis. 

SEAMBIOSIS in Palma de Mallorca: awarded project in Europan 13 competition, 2015

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