Madrid Río Park, with its 43 kilometers of routes, has become the city’s leading recreational and cultural enclave, both for its historical monuments and for the leisure and cultural facilities it houses. Since 2010 with the “Golden Swing Award” it has not stopped receiving awards, the most recent was granted in the United States a month ago, the 12th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design - Harvard GSD.
The masterplan for the recovery and enhancement of the Manzanares riverbank and the creation of a new urban area was commissioned by the City Council to the Dutch landscape studio West 8 and the association of Spanish studios MRIO Arquitectos. It is the largest urban regeneration project carried out in the city to respond to the enormous forgotten space between roads, streets and buildings that had formed in the decades of heavy urbanization along the river.
The linear park, built between 2006 and 2011, occupies an area of 120 hectares that was freed by the burial of six kilometers of the western arc of the M-30 motorway. The proposal is based on the use of vegetation as the main design element. The project establishes as general strategies: to implant a new green skin between the river and the city, create new public spaces and build pedestrian bridges to create meeting areas and unite the different parts of the city on both sides of the Manzanares.
The proposal consists of three main units or zones, which group the different thematic gardens that form the park:
First, the Salón de Pinos, or green corridor, which runs along the right bank of the river. It is located almost entirely on the top of the motorway tunnel, has an average width of 30 meters and has more than 8,000 pine trees. It is this green infrastructure that allows continuity of routes and generates the imaginary extension of the pine forests of the northern mountains of Madrid to reach the different types of gardens on the riverbank.
Then, the Huerta de la Partida, the old Royal Palace, is now a modern interpretation of the original royal orchard with a great variety of fruit trees forming groupings.
Finally, the wide strip on the left bank where the Arganzuela Park complex is located, which includes the Contemporary Art Creation Center of Matadero, and which represents the largest unitary green space area of the proposal. The dominant motif in this area is water. The Manzanares River in this section is channeled and numerous streams appear in the park that cross and join through the new topographies generated. Here the space is conceived as a large grove that contains several landscapes. In this way the park is conceived as a fragment of the river basin and incorporates three botanical areas: Mediterranean forest, Atlantic forest and riparian forest.
Among the various facilities that the park has, the following stand out: a 30-kilometer bike lane, a football field, two skating rinks and several children’s play areas. Thus, today, Madrid Rio has become one of the most popular parks in the city and an essential walking place for both residents and visitors to the city.
Images: Own