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Madrid Río Wins Harvard's Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design

Madrid Río, a 120-hectare linear park that transformed the banks of Madrid's Manzanares River, has been awarded the Harvard Graduate School of Design's 12th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design. Designed by Burgos & Garrido, Porras & La Casta, Rubio & Álvarez-Sala, and West 8, the public park completed its final phase this year - 10 years after being announced as winner of project's international competition.

“The decision to award Madrid Río the Green Prize in Urban Design was motivated by the jury’s desire to highlight the potential for thoughtfully planned and carefully executed mobility infrastructures to transform a city and its region,” commented jury chair Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning at Harvard GSD. “The extent to which the project harnesses the deployment of new infrastructures as an opportunity to repair and regenerate the city through carefully articulated design interventions is particularly valuable within the context of contemporary urbanization globally.”

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Madrid RIO / Burgos & Garrido + Porras La Casta + Rubio & Álvarez-Sala + West 8

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© Jeroen Musch

In 2005, an invited international competition was announced for a design of the reclaimed area above a tunnel holding a section of the M30 ring motorway immediately adjacent to the old city centre.  The team proposed to resolve the urban situation exclusively by means of landscape architecture, and were the winning submission. The design is founded on the idea »3 + 30« – a concept which proposes dividing the 80 hectare urban development into a trilogy of initial strategic projects that establish a basic structure which then serves as a solid foundation for a number of further projects, initiated in part by the municipality as well as by private investors and residents.

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Project Team: Burgos & Garrido / Porras La Casta / Rubio & Álvarez-Sala / West 8 Location: Madrid, Spain Project Management: Ginés Garrido Colomero Client: Madrid City Government Project Area: 80 hectares Project Year: 2006–2011 Renderings: Courtesy of West 8 Photographs: Jeroen Musch