Nueva Costa del Plata Project by OFICINA URBANA

Nueva Costa del Plata Project (6 Strategic Topics) by OFICINA URBANA S.A.:
1 History & Nature
The project aims to reestablish the physical, social, cultural and productive link between the City and the River, by reinterpreting the urban processes that led to the peripheral conditions of the space as it is today, by applying strategies that unite both those values related to the history of the place and those determined by the natural wealth provided by the Rio de la Plata and the woods that line its shore.

The aim of the operation is to reclaim these lands, currently in disuse for the population of the cities of Quilmes and Avellaneda, and their significant area of influence in the southern zone of the metropolis of Buenos Aires.

They are territories which over time have led to a process of restoration and increase in communities of flora and fauna, at the same time that they transformed their topographical characteristics in relation to excavated areas that, having been made for other needs, were transformed into large lagoons.

They are lands which today are not incorporated into the urban fabric, are closed off to public use, which were, from an environmental standpoint, ill used and as such require rehabilitation and integration.

5 kilometers of river front for public use
230 hectares in areas of an urban environmental project
400 hectares in areas of landscape restoration

2 Challenge & New Paradigm

The transformation and urban development adapted to the conditions of the environment is a challenge that the project takes up, creating a
paradigm change in traditional urban development.

We are accustomed to the domination of geometric rationality – the rationality, to be exact, of cities as they were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, in which orthogonal planning is spread over the land: our project instead proposes a paradigm shift based on replacing this traditional “geometric imposition” by “geometric integration,” in which the conditions of natural and landscape values of the surroundings direct and guide the process of defining the urban form in its setting.

At the same time the project integrates the riverside spaces with a sanitation landfill, achieving continuity and linkage of the cities of Avellaneda and Quilmes with the project, through a metropolitan-scale ‘buffer-zone’ park, based on the environmental and landscape reconversion of 400 hectares of the sanitation landfill: reversing “environmental degradation” and creating “environmental and landscape integration.”

The proposal, therefore, takes up the double challenge of changing the traditional paradigms of “geometric imposition” and “environmental degradation” into spaces integrated into the community, the environment and the landscape.

10% public traffic, pedestrian and cycling networks
62% public areas of woods, lagoons and beach
5% public facilities
77% areas turned over to public use
23% urbanized areas

3 Identity & Landscape
Reestablishing the link between City and River implies intermeshing culture and community with environment and landscape, these aspects constituting one of the main points of the project’s strategy. The shores of the Rio de la Plata and its landscape, as our tangible inheritance, invigorate and reinforce our identity, that intangible inheritance that sustains the relation between man and his surroundings.

This integration of urban habits in relation to the landscape that contains them is projected on the basis of an integration of 4 units of landscape: Beach, Woods, Lagoons, and Slopes [Lomas].

Beach,
Inter-phase public space between land and water.

Woods,
Native vegetal covering with low incidence of public use.

Lagoons,
Surfaces of water between development areas (landscape buffer)

Slopes,
Heterogeneous topography created by the sanitation landfill.

The public space is designed as a system establishing, out of diversity of spaces and mobility paths, a network that, rhizome-like, integrates and relates all the sectors of the project with units of landscape.

Thus, the conditions for the avenues, bike-path circuits, aerobic circuits, promenades, and the building code guidelines for ground floors, create public expansion, with terraces or squares added in to social and collective use.

4 landscape units
34 hectares of lagoons
110 hectares of woods
250 hectares of beach

4 Integration & Environment
Nueva Costa del Plata reclaims the idea of the city integrated with its riverside landscape, safeguarding our natural heritage through a project that integrates the physical conditions of a locale with the urban dynamic of residing and living in community.

The project’s greatest success is grounded in the integration of the different urbanistic programs with the environment, prioritizing the following themes:

Shoreline Topography and Dynamics
The shores of the Rio de la Plata and the shore-ridge [coastal hillock that in flooding can turn into a river islet], as a zone of value for its landscape and as urban buffer-zone.

Flora and Fauna
The Paranaense woods and the marshland as biological resources for diversity of flora and fauna.

Accessibility and Infrastructure
The diversity of networks of access, differentiated by intensity and route as an infrastructural support of the service networks.

Public Space and Urban Activities
The spaces for open access activity as a dynamic network for the connectivity of project and landscape.

The project is a neighborhood open to the city that, spatially integrated to the landscape, shows to advantage the diversity of uses and activities (university, commerce, culture, sports, recreation, tourism, health)
that shape a new neighborhood that has a high level of sustainability
and increased quality of life.

22 hectares of urban public spaces
3 kilometers of new public promenade
110 hectares of woods
250 hectares of beach

5 Innovation & Development

The project’s dimension required developing simultaneous work between the urban design team and the teams of sectorial specialists, the community and the municipal authorities. The environmental and social evaluations were incorporated into the project guidelines from the very outset of idea-planning, a circumstance that allowed for optimizing and enriching results.

The innovative parameters are related to:

Environmental Preservation
80% of the site’s surface is preserved, protecting the internal lagoons, the Paranaense woods, the marshlands, and the beaches.

Landscape Restoration
In the 400 hectares of sanitation landfill through recovery for public use of its spaces, with sporting, cultural and recreational activities.

Sustainability
Urban design with implementation of landscape and building criteria that minimize the impact on the natural setting and use environmentally friendly materials and systems.

Public Space
The criterion for the system of public spaces and their integration with the natural and urban environments constitute the main contribution of free and open use, allowing access to and enjoyment of the landscape of the slopes, lagoons, woods and beach.

Accessibility and Mobility
The traffic, pedestrian and cycling network and the possible use of an electrically guided medium form a multiple system of mobility allowing access in various media to spaces, depending on their characteristics of environment, landscape and use.

Ecological Services
The project contributes to the cities of Avellaneda and Quilmes 20% of its public green spaces, includes a landscape buffer zone between the traditional city and the river, optimizes the ability of the basins to tap rainwater, incorporates 5 kilometers of beach, marshland and woods for city public space.

6 Society & Land

Even though the project spans an area of indirect influence over two million inhabitants, to which it contributes productive mobility and environmental quality on a metropolitan level, the population rooted in the immediate area of the project comprises various levels, depending on its buying power and its consequent location and physical lifestyle. Low-, medium-, and high-quality dwellings coexist in a single urban area.

An approximate 400,000 citizens make up the mixed fabric, rich in complexity and diversity, in direct relation to the project.

Efficient urban design of spaces to live in, work in and enjoy is related to quality of life, and this in turn with the quality of public space. It is in that sense that the project offers a substantial benefit, both for the interior of this area and for its immediate environs.

Public space, landscape diversity, networks of services and connectivity constitute forces of physical and social integration.

The planned projects contribute an extensive added value to the land into which they will be inserted, this synergic process distributes benefits for setting up a new urban space of an environmental character for two cities with only a small percentage of green spaces per inhabitant.