Nou Parc Barcelona, ON-A architecture Camp Nou stadium Design

Nou Parc Barcelona Landscape Design at Camp Nou

Design: ON-A architecture

Location: Camp Nou, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Converting the Barcelona football stadium into a 26-hectare park is the proposal of a smart office to renature the cities

Images © ON-A

4 August 2020

Nou Parc Barcelona Landscape

Camp Nou stadium – Nou Parc Barcelona

The ON-A architecture studio opens the debate to the possible renaturation of urban areas to adapt to the needs of the post-covid future. The proposal, called ‘Nou Parc’, follows the line of international examples in other cities.

The Camp Nou stadium and surrounding facilities would be covered by a new topography that would allow creating a large forest for the city of Barcelona.

“Renaturing cities and gaining quality space for citizens is no longer just an interesting idea, it is a necessity”, says Jordi Fernández, one of the two founding partners of ON-A Architecture. This smart office based in Barcelona, has specialized in renaturation and bioconstruction, conceiving in its 15 years of experience different ways of adapting green spaces in urban contexts, such as the proposed redevelopment of the Llano Amarillo Park in Algeciras or the Taichung Gateway Park of Taiwan.
“According to the WHO, cities should have a minimum of 9m2 of green area per inhabitant. Currently Barcelona has just over 6m2.”

THE ‘NOU PARC’ PROPOSAL
‘Nou Parc’ is a project that encourages showing how cities could be renatured without losing building space; a win-win between the private and the public. In Barcelona there are few available spaces where this is possible, including the Camp Nou stadium.

In this case, the proposal suggests to reform one of the most significant locations in the city of Barcelona, the Camp Nou, elevating the topography and creating a blanket of green forest that would allow the facilities attached to the stadium and other equipment to be maintained below the surface of the new park.

The resulting new topography would hide the services linked to the stadium (parking, offices, leisure spaces, restoration, museum, multipurpose pavilion and entrances) and the stadium would function independently of the park.

Currently this fenced area with little greenery (building 32%, sports areas 10%, green areas 8%, hard pavement areas 50%) generates an “island” effect, separating the neighborhood of Les Corts from the University Area.

This huge space is regularly in disuse, except for sports events or organized visits to private facilities. Neighbors often experience the collapse caused by major sports events, so management is seen to be inefficient.

A rehabilitation of this magnitude and characteristics would be a great opportunity for the city of Barcelona, which would benefit from a new green and leisure space capable of connecting neighborhoods, removing boundaries, producing 15,000kg of oxygen / day and absorbing 25,000kg of C02 / day.

TECHNOLOGY, A PARTNER IN URBAN PLANNING PROGRESS

Technology becomes a partner in the process of renaturation, thanks to it we can control and predict problems such as water supply and the maintenance of green areas. In this sense, ON-A works closely in collaboration with Verdtical, a company specialized in the development of systems and technology for the creation of urban ecosystems.

With this advanced technology you can install green roofs, vertical gardens and provide technical solutions for the creation of forest cities, with elements controlled by intelligent systems in IOT (Internet of things).

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The organic environment is controlled by sensors and predictive protocols in artificial intelligence. The sensors collect information on the health status of green areas and act as prophylactic gatekeepers.

Taichung Gateway Park, Taiwan landscape design by ON-A Arquitectura:

RENATURALIZATION OF CITIES AROUND THE WORLD

The transition to the new normality in Spain and in the world will be accompanied by proposals that help to avoid the accumulation of people, recovering urban space that had been used for cars or private facilities. ON-A foresees that this recovery will be based on the creation of more green spaces, since they not only allow to gain public space, but also help to clean the air and improve citizens’ quality of life.

GMP architekten Tokyo 2020 Olympic Stadium competition proposal:

For example, with a 30% increase in green spaces, 400 premature deaths per year could be avoided, according to a recent study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) published in The Lancet. The idea of merging the public and the private to gain green space has already been applied in other international examples.

Parque Llano Amarillo de Algeciras, Spain – design by ON-A architecture:

The same topography suggested in the ‘Nou Parc’ project can be seen in some proposals that were presented for the creation of the Olympic Stadium of the Tokyo 2020 Games. This is the case of DGT Architects or the proposal of GMP Architekten. In both cases, the stadium is covered with a green cloak that allows the transit of people. Another similar example is the proposal for Craterre-Montpellier Arena by Arch. Giovanni Vaccarini.

Olympiapark Munich landscape design by ON-A Arquitectura:

ABOUT ON-A STUDIO

Since its inception, ON-A chosen to incorporate green as a design tool. The studio’s first project of these characteristics, the Llano Amarillo Park in Algeciras in 2005, already introduced the concept of green and public space as the backbone of the proposal. The facilities planned in the area, including an auditorium, restaurants, parking, etc. were hidden through a topography to create an artificial mountain in which host pedestrian paths and a viewpoint.

Queen Elizabeth Park in London, UK, landscape design by ON-A Arquitectura:

The architecture studio ON-A was founded in Barcelona in 2005 by Eduardo Gutiérrez and Jordi Fernández. Their smart approach to architecture has allowed them to specialize in developing innovative solutions based on research and technology. For more than 15 years they have developed projects in different sectors, highlighting their involvement in the renaturation of buildings and urban areas as experts in bioconstruction. Their projects are committed to innovation, the future and uniqueness, turning everything they can imagine into architecture.

Nou Parc Barcelona Landscape Design images / information received 040820

Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain