“Ciudad, Camino, montaña” is a project that investigates on how a city should meet their ends, specifically when encountering a natural heritage such as the mountain of Can Palomeras, in Malgrat de Mar. In search of a location, the Escultor Clara sector very quickly caught our attention, an enormous empty plot that is currently located in the border between the city and the forest. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to repurpose the periphery of the town by redefining the limits of the forest. Our ambition was to insert the expression of the natural environment within the urban realm.
The proposal can be broken down to three main strategies, that aim to extend the forest into the Escultor Clara sector. First, a consolidation of the borders of the empty plot, followed by a massive vegetation planting in order to ensure the forest continuity, and completed with the construction of a new itinerary. The new school becomes the keystone of this new itinerary, being the linking piece between of the network of paths that lead to the forest, and the city fabric. The roof of the new building becomes a public pathway through which pedestrians can ascend to the mountain.
The building adapts to the floodplain where it is located and embraces the infrastructural language of Malgrat de Mar’s mining past. The new school explores the possibility of a unique pedagogical model, in which the students would be in a closer contact with their agricultural context. The project also deals with the dificulties that arise from the coexistance between the school enclosure and the public pathway, and the two external elements— the tower and the round greenhouse— play the role of mediators by serving both usages.
