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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tLineas<\/strong> Lines
\nMarella Santangelo<\/p>\n
\n\u201dLos primeros croquis para el Parque Diagonal Mar son lineas que seleccionan m\u00e1s que nada unos caminos de energ\u00eda, unos flujos que s\u00f3lo m\u00e1s tarde se transformar\u00e1n en caminos, monta\u00f1as, agua, espacios infantiles. Estas l\u00edneas indican un deseo de un mundo natural en la ciudad, reflejo de algo lejano en nuestras mentes de un jard\u00edn, un para\u00edso…\u201d This is how Benedetta Tagliabue describes the spark behind the Parque Diagonal Mar project, from the earliest sketches, when Enric Miralles was still alive, to its completion.\u00a0 She has written about flowing energy that turns into spaces, objects, pathways, that is then brought together into physical lines which in turn draw spaces, define heights, which rise and fall, reach upward toward the sky.\u00a0 At the heart of everything these lines are the jump-off point for fantastical and inventive images, for daydreams, and can serve as a metaphor for the last ten years of work from the EMBT studio that Benedetta Tagliabue runs.\u00a0 Lines are at once continuity, memory, connection, but at the same time they project into the future.\u00a0 They appear to be the thread running through her most recent projects, almost like a recollection of an ancient story in a present that concentrates on moving towards times yet to come.
\nIt was in January 2005, on a morning as warm and sunny as only winter mornings in Barcelona can be, that I first went to the Parque Diagonal Mar.\u00a0 I was with Benedetta and our children Caterina, Anna Virginia and Domenech.\u00a0 As the children played and ran around, slid and climbed, I watched and thought about how strong the present is, its sense of becoming, about the unfinished park, about the children who are our future and of the memory of Enric, alive and well, all bound up inside an EMBT studio project coming to life in this area surrounded by cranes and in the midst of transformation.\u00a0 There was some magic in the atmosphere.\u00a0 Benedetta and I started playing with the children and found ourselves completely at one with the park.
\nBenedetta Tagliabue\u2019s lines, symbolic lines and physical lines drawn on the ground, crop up across the 17 hectares that make up this Park.\u00a0 The lines take on different forms and directions that design makes tangible but are as intangible as water spray.\u00a0 But the last ten years have meant a period of hard work during which she has preserved continuity but built a new architectural and professional identity. For several reasons I\u2019ve chosen to focus on two projects: Parque Diagonal Mar in Barcelona and Hafencity in Hamburg.\u00a0 Let me try to explain why.\u00a0 Both projects are urban in scale, open spaces, places for people to be, projects that work on the relationship between land and water.\u00a0 In Hamburg, the project runs along the waterfront; in Barcelona it is on a diagonal.
\nOne was born as a specialist area, a port; the other reshaped an important tract of the city, the Poblenou district on the threshold of sea and beach, adding new-build residential accommodation.\u00a0\u00a0 The liminal area between land and water is somewhat magical: specific orographical, physical and positional conditions not only inform how a city is built but also provide a basic ingredient for how it is configured and how it looks.\u00a0 Through the built environment, both of these projects seem to celebrate and underpin liminality – a play between addition and subtraction, water and land.
\n\u201cUntil it reaches its limits, the sea is a simple thing that repeats wave on wave.\u00a0 But the simplest things in nature don\u2019t allow anything else alongside without shifting shape, without making a big fuss, or the greatest things without undergoing some sort of diminishing\u201d, wrote the extraordinary poet Francis Ponge.\u00a0 Man designs shapes but, in the end, there is always a clash between natural shapes and artificial ones. Hamburg\u2019s tidal waters change the waterfront scenery during the course of each day and over the seasons.\u00a0 The project accommodates this with flexibility of form for differing conditions.\u00a0 A clever play on height gives various build levels to the new quays, an artificial shore made even more complex as the new design is added over the rigidity of the port profile.
\nIn Barcelona the project\u2019s flowing lines are reminiscent of vegetation rich in trees, branches and stems.
\nThese give the natural feel of a moulded border between beach and sea to the urban space, creating lots of welcoming and embracing places for people to stop and enjoy the breezes and perfumes of the sea close by.\u00a0 In this project, it is the natural that comes across most strongly. Water is a main component: various water sources and a large lake reflecting the city and with it all that is natural and artificial; water nebulised and sprayed from steel tubes that intertwine to become pergolas; shade-giving refuges that progressively take on different shapes and different roles set against the backdrop of the sea \u2013 calm, choppy, stormy, blue, turquoise, cobalt.
\nAlthough Hamburg and Barcelona are culturally, geographically and climatically poles apart, in both places Benedetta Tagliabue choses spatial arrangements that enhance the value of the areas\u2019 position.\u00a0 She offers new access to liminal areas, meaning that the limit is not a boundary, not a closing off from other, but rather a place next to other stories and worlds, a place open to the possible, to welcoming other. And this is not only characteristic of Benedetta Tagliabue\u2019s personality but also typical of the environment at the EMBT studio, where the way of working is one of openness and welcome to other, to the world and to what is going on outside. These places have been thought out, designed and built by the same people.\u00a0 They are places of welcome in the city, threshold places.\u00a0 As Benjamin says, \u201ca threshold is a zone, a zone of passage.\u00a0 The word threshold implies \u2018change\u2019, \u2018passage, \u2018sea\u2019\u201d.
\nHamburg\u2019s Hafencity accommodates the changing surroundings with a system of floating platforms that rise and fall with the tides, creating an artificial but not static environment.\u00a0 This is carried over into the perception people get of the place from two pedestrian walkways, on different levels, both of which adapt and move with the motion of the tides.\u00a0 The first walkway, 4.5 metres above ground, is a pedestrian area for small businesses.\u00a0 At 7.5 metres a second walkway at street level offers an alternative pedestrian filter to the traffic on the major roads.\u00a0 A complex system of paths, ramps, walkways and inclines links together the spaces on all three levels. Here the passage not only between land and water but also between the port and its city is facilitated by new spaces that respect the memory of previous infrastructure while delivering a new narrative about a concerted effort to claim back the waterfront for the city.\u00a0\u00a0 Some spaces are also conceived with the port in mind, like the Kibbelsteg bridge that draws the city toward the water, the new paved square and the views over the River Ride. The site earmarked for the Parque Diagonal Mar possesses fundamentally different characteristics to those in Hamburg, starting with the fact that it is a threshold.\u00a0 The site is at the end of the Avinguda Diagonal, in the \u201cPlan 22@\u201d zone, that reorganises the old Poblenou industrial zone.\u00a0 It is where the major thoroughfare takes on a new role as the structural axis for the new developments, where the plans fracture the Cerd\u00e0 geometry.\u00a0 The new park slots into the threshold between this zone, known as Diagonal Mar, and the Olympic village. The Parque Diagonal Mar is a very urban, green, area where artifice and nature truly blend.\u00a0 Artifice echoes nature\u2019s shapes and forms triggering a continuous counterpoint between trees, grass and plants.\u00a0 The design of the green pavement alternates rises, flat meadows and green hills, bridges and walkways, spaces dedicated to sport and games \u2013 in a never-ending marking, excavating and shaping of the landscape. In Hamburg, the Parque Diagonal Mar\u2019s greenness and strong sense of nature become an artificial landscape punctuated by natural elements such as the water and green.\u00a0 Trees, shapes of seagull flight, of ships sailing, of waters choppy with waves \u2013 all find their subtle way into the design of the old port spaces and surface again in the decorations on walls and objects, in the use of colour so delicate that it recalls the rustle of a richly embroidered fabric.\u00a0 In the Parque Diagonal Mar, decoration, which is an important element in the Barcelona studio\u2019s projects, takes the form of large floral designs in coloured ceramic, often with a reflective finish, perfected through laboratory testing. We are talking about two urban development projects with strong \u201cfounding\u201d values, designed for places claiming back or building an identity.\u00a0 Here the concept of architectural design claims the project as a means of excellence through which to know and transform reality.\u00a0 This includes fully owning our own imaginative capacity and being open to wonder.
\n\u201cComing back to the spark behind a project [\u2026] perhaps the problem is having to put yourself into the mix, but when we identify the problem it is incredible how every automatic answer is excluded,\u201d said Enric Miralles.\u00a0 \u201cI am truly surprised at how this can be, what I mean is at how you can conjure a new topography out of the meeting of different forms, like lashes meeting with the eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.tecnichenuove.it\/areaarch\/2015\/12\/15-2-150x100.jpg\")
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