Water's Journey - El viaje del agua

Carla Coromina (ES), Javier Rubio Frías (ES), Andrea Díaz Lacalle (ES), Ibon Doval Martínez (ES).

First Prize

Featured image of the Water Journey project

The project

The project is located in the privileged area of the municipality; the Levante expansion

The revitalization of Santa Pola highlights the need to reconnect urban areas with natural water systems to address environmental and social challenges. Previous urban development, including quarry exploitation, has altered the hydrological and ecological balance of the region. However, through ecological restoration and sustainable urban design, water management can be used both to improve the landscape and to enhance the quality of life of residents.

The proposed green connectors, from the Sunken Landscape to Varadero Beach, seek to restore water flows, reduce flooding and reintroduce biodiversity, while improving urban spaces. With strategies such as permeable paving and water harvesting, these projects seek to make Santa Pola a more habitable and ecologically resilient place.

By focusing on water as a transformative element, this initiative offers the opportunity to safeguard the region's natural beauty and create a lasting connection between the community and its environment.

Jury evaluation

In this project, the jury valued the understanding of the territory that places the site in its dynamic geographical systems. Water and relief are reaffirmed as foundational vectors of landscapes and initiate the construction of a new narrative. This story embodies spatial and temporal scales by properly orienting the interactions between land and water. It is part of an economic and effective strategy to turn the dynamics of environments into the way to replenish the site and its future resilience with respect to climate change.

From the large scale to the small, this project is built over time and for the benefit of water to create places that can be appropriated by new uses.

The project is characterized by great coherence and complementarity in working at different scales. It offers simple and flexible proposals that adapt to different time scales and, therefore, facilitate programming and investment in the short, medium and long term.

At large scale: the coast, the city and the sierra. The project proposes an «urban nature» system based on the restoration of coastal rivers from the sierra, transepts on the slope connected to green corridors of uses parallel to the slopes.
At the site level: from the quarry to the waterfront. The project proposes adapted and complementary actions for each situation, enhancing the water flow, the already existing, the opportunities and the potential for re-appropriation of the sites (views, traces, paths, walks, crops, productions, facilities, sports, natural and geological heritage, etc.):

- In the quarry, it proposes to reconquer the soils by initiating their revegetation. It presents the implementation of terraforming devices that are based on the economy of the environment, recurrence and the long term (Canada, micro-earthworks, etc.). It uses the forces of nature as a process for its objective.

- In the foothills, at the urban interface, it offers facilities for events through the conversion of existing (buildings, platforms) and gives a double function to facilities to regulate water.

- In the urban crossing, it reclassifies the street as a soft green lane to better retain water and connect intermediate spaces.

- On the waterfront, it offers to divide the coast between natural spaces (wetlands) and recreational uses with temporary facilities...