Landscape regeneration. «Explanada do Horizonte» by María Fandiño

Description of project by María Fandiño

The site is Protected to the east by the Serra da Groba and embraced to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, the Horizonte esplanade dominates the views over the coastal plain. The section of the territory descends from Monte Torroso down the hillside leaving in its wake a landscape of reforestation forests, granitic masses with low shrubs, and a fertile coastal plain resulting from the deposition of Quaternary sediments. The anthropization of this plain draws masonry terraces that have allowed its cultivation throughout history and fold its morphology until it meets the sea. 

In the '70s, with the construction of the PO-552, the Horizonte, the meeting point in Portecelo, was filled with rubble to create an esplanade, thus breaking the natural section of the coast, blocking the natural runoff and unbalancing the native ecosystem. The esplanade was consolidated as a space, a fill that was made without understanding the submerged ecology behind it. A surface to be a meeting place, "a large esplanade" and that, in its wake, erased the genetic code of the place and, therefore, was never consolidated as a meeting space. 

The project seeks to recover the memory and regenerate the degraded ecosystem through a tool: the place itself. Looking through and towards the environment, we study topography, the drainage, the vegetation, the proportions, and the matter... we intend to redraw the landscape. Projecting toward the landscape allows architecture to be gifted by nature. The reappearance of the granitic laxes that previously crowned the coast was a turning point: architecture looked down to show the territory itself in its maximum splendor. What had been drawn mutates as the work progresses, each rock that appears is cleaned, dignified, and modifies the traces of the plan. The landscape recolonizes the space and the project folds at its mercy. The architecture becomes invisible, adapting to the new morphologies. The sequence of terraces connected by ramps and stairs allows a constant view of the horizon and its distribution according to the intensity of use. Paving and walls combine the granulometry of granite to blend with the massiveness of the laxes, this massiveness contrasts with the structures of children's games, furniture, and lighting that stand light, floating on the rock. Geometry and topography are concatenated until they touch the natural level of the terrain in an atmosphere where everything is stone and salt. The vegetation The planting strategy takes into account the salinity of the ocean, its adverse conditions, and the acidity of the soil. 

The climactic community of the Atlantic coast was based on the Galician-Portuguese thermophilic oak woodland: the Rusco aculeate-Quercetum roboris association. The Northern Galician oak forest is also present in the association Blencho spicantis-Quercetum roboris. This Atlantic forest, already forgotten in the collective memory due to the intensive exploitation by reforestation species (eucalyptus and pine), occurs in acid soils forming complex systems: shrubs generate associations with trees and ground cover strata so that balance the pH and improve soil quality to survive the onslaught of the Atlantic, the saltpeter and the shallow soil. Currently, invasive species such as metrosideros excelsa, acacia auriculiformis, and eucalyptus globulus have monocultured and impoverished soils. Moving away from immediate results and understanding the project as a living element that is completed over time is essential to achieve the resilience on which the ecosystem will be re-established. 

The planting process is summarized in an ecological succession that incorporates species that improve the edaphic structure of the soil, nurse species (birch) that protect the target species (oak and cork oak) from stressful climatic conditions, and improve soil composition. These species are doomed to disappear in short periods, to ensure the departure of the target species. At the same time, shrubs are introduced at low density, with wide planting frames that allow the slopes to be conquered by the native coastal vegetation thanks to the southern winds, so spring after spring we observe how the landscape mimics the environment, without irrigation, without excessive pruning, allowing the rotting of species that feed the substrate. A highly degraded soil is regenerated and, over time, a landscape is recovered. 

The resulting atmosphere oscillates between the gray of the mountain and the blue of the ocean, stillness and movement, gravity and lightness, and dawn and dusk. Pure forms that are embedded in the pavement and merge with the surrounding landscape. A place to feel the territory and its forms, to feel the tectonics that emerges from the ocean until it touches our feet.

Values:

Cultural and artistic values: The project is born from understanding the territory as an elaborated artifice, it studies its functioning patterns, proportions, and its composition, its geomorphology, vegetation, soil depth... that compose its structure. In this context, the territory is conceived as architecture itself where, through cultural and heritage values, the project begins to take shape. It is a mechanism in continuous change, a continuous process in time that begins to take shape in the work where the architecture looks down, polishes, and adapts during the construction process to the rocks that appear in the excavation process. These rocks are the genetic code of the inhabitants of the site and, through the public space, this materiality is emphasized, turning neighbors and visitors into an active part of the process, reconnecting people with the energy of the place and its history. The resulting space is a combination of territory and avant-garde, a place to feel the energy of the place and its history.

Values associated with rehabilitation and regeneration: Understanding architecture as the expression of the environment, the project speaks of new uses linked to the economy of forms and materials of the environment itself: km0. The appearance of the laxes and the analysis of the soil depth dictated a hard exercise to recover the Atlantic coast ecosystem that had been buried for 50 years under the rubble. The project is aware of this situation and reinterprets the public space as an opportunity to give back to the environment and its self-sufficiency. Far from being an immediate solution, it was decided to plant nurse plants, which modify the Ph of the soil so that the target species can subsequently develop over time. The low density of planting expects the wind to finish colonizing the spaces with native coastal species. With this strategy not only an ecosystem is recovered, but also a change in the modus operandi proposed, there is no irrigation, no ornamental species, and the objective is regeneration.