Ca n’Escandell Park

Ibiza, 2011

Rurbanity.

This park is understood as a rurban phenomenon due to its setting, where the island’s rural landscape and the city meet. 

In this manner, if one can still find elements on the site belonging to its rural landscape heritage, these are not only brought back to life and underlined, they are also activated and reinterpreted in contemporary form: dry stone walls that once marked property lines are restored and extended, thus becoming structuring elements that help to weave together the park and the city. Preexisting vegetation is not only maintained, but also multiplied and protected by means of re-naturalization processes and the reintroduction of species, generating a park of both pine and oleander groves that consolidate the existing and enrich their own ecosystems. If this former agricultural land was once productive, the park also becomes so, and beyond showing a sample of that long lost world, these resources are revealed to its users, making them participate in the process of up keeping the orchards and nurseries. If we add to this contemporary requirements—play, rest, sports and cultural areas— and the proactive approach of this proposal which considers the rural spaces “outside” Ca n’Escandell as a park per se, a new place arises that participates in the joining up, materially and immaterially, of the city and its territory…