VILADECANS SEAFRONT ‘vdk’
SPECIAL PLAN OF VILADECANS WATERFRONT BETWEEN MURTRA & REMOLAR WETLANDS
The guidelines and planning strategies to recover public access to the pine tree forest and seashore in Viladecans -formerly used exclusively by the camping site businesses that owned it- have been guided by the landscape interpretation of the site.
Mapping in a selective and abstract way, like making an x-ray, has helped de-codify the structural elements of this landscape. This mapping reveals the essential character of the site: the boldness of the pinetum front and the variety of densities of the tree canopy; the water drainage system of this territory and its different formalization in canals and lagoons; the “comb” structure of the main trails and the scattered built elements in the pinetum.
A personal and synthetic cartography condenses these characteristics and manifests the landscape’s spatial potential for future interventions. In the site perception analysis, the following elements play an essential role: The different scales of the void (the pine forest clearings and the variability of the littoral section width); the visual corridors (the back dune open system and the transversal visual continuities) relevant in a lon- gitudinal oriented landscape) and punctual visual connectors (the interruptions of the dune cord) windows to frame the horizon and the sea, intermittent vistas of pines and sea.
The proposed Landscape Plan aims to reconcile leisure activities of differing intensities with the preservation and protection of this natural spa- ce. Strategies regarding visibility and transversality, to achieve visual continuity between different landscapes are implemented. The landscape is occupied in a discontinuous way, introducing pauses in the built mass, densifying around the existing built elements that tend to gravitate around the accesses. Visual permeability between the pine tree forest and the sea reveals the richness of the natural transect beach-dune-back dune-pinetum.
Overlapping spaces (buildings that aren’t aligned, buildings that are set back, and buildings of different depths) favor transitions and contact between different landscape conditions.
Setting backs in the built front, discontinuity in the alignment of buildings, set different depths that allow the insertion and overlapping of different spatial situations, favoring the transitions and the transversal perception or contact between different landscape conditions.
The intensity of the leisure activities is reduced as people move towards the east, to the natural reservoir lagoon area. For that purpose, the whole area has an asymmetrical access and street system, loaded to the west.
The plan avoids enclosures and precincts, not sectoring and forbidding but designing thresholds, guaranteeing connectivity between natural areas and landscape elements. With a landscape design, we illustrate and test the activity conditions established in the Plan.