Paying attention to place. La Hoya Mediterranean Gardens Park by KAUH

Project description by KAUH

This landscape intervention recovers the unique heritage site of La Hoya for Almería. La Hoya is a ravine located on the edge of the historic city, between the monumental complex of the Alcazaba and the walls of the San Cristóbal hill. Occupied by a neighborhood in medieval times that was later abandoned, it was used for centuries as an agricultural space until it entered a period of degradation and ended up becoming a large wasteland between oblivion and expectation.

Restoration of the inherited landscape, environmental regeneration, and re-imagination of the space are articulated to define this proposal that seeks to rediscover and reinvent this place. The action of revealing the history of this landscape and adding to the palimpsest of its evolution has been the main argument of the project.

The project was already in place; in the slopes that embrace it, the wall that draws its concave shape, the fortresses that guard it, the dam that contains it, the valley that enlarges it, the agricultural terraces that geometrize it, the water network that irrigates it, the archeology invisible subsoil, the escarpments and rock outcrops, the tone of its earth, its resilient vegetation, its wildlife, its arid atmosphere, its wide, blue sky. Our job has been to attend to all the traces we find and highlight them with a soft, minimally affecting, and hyper-specific intervention.


La Hoya Mediterranean Gardens Park by KAUH. Photograph by Fernando Alda.

The necessary actions are decided by investigating the memory of the landscape to understand and maintain its configuration, explore its most diverse scales, understand its unique form, identify its multiple environmental units, preserve and enhance its valuable ecosystem, shape its expressive materiality and atmosphere, and look for the construction techniques and materials that make it possible. All of this is within a framework of reflection on what a park is and what it is like today in the context of the global environmental crisis, in a heritage enclave like this one and with a climate like that of Almería. And with the desire to turn La Hoya into a shared space between agents with no added program other than the enjoyment per se of such a unique place.

The imagined park, the Mediterranean Gardens of La Hoya, is a landscape that brings together a monumental environment, an archaeological reserve, a flora and fauna sanctuary in the center of the city, a celebration of the semi-arid Mediterranean climate and a reflection of the Almería water culture.