Just outside its historic centre, for a six kilometre stretch along the banks of the River Manzanares, the city of Madrid has buried previously existing traffic roads under the soil. For the resulting traffic-free zone, the Dutch firm West 8 Urban Design and Landscape and MRIO Arquitectos (a consortium of the Madrilene architecture firms Burgos & Carrido Arquitectos, Porras La Casta Arquitectos and Rubio Álvarez-Sala Arquitectos) joined forces to design a master plan. Unlike the plans submitted by other groups participating in the competition, their concept is predominantly a landscape design. This project, which has been largely completed at the time of writing, similarly returns an urban quality to the residents by transforming the riverside area into a public park. It would seem that a park, much more than the street or square, has become the archetypical public space of the 21st century.
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