Winner of the Merit Award 2023 WLA Awards – Built Urban Design category
A respectful action with the collective memory of this historical walk that recovers its full functionality, improves its accessibility, solves its drainage problems and safeguards the centenary tree complex.
An emblematic place
The Boca de la Mina promenade was built in the 19th and is located in the northwest of the city of Reus, Spain specifically in the north of the railway line and the train station. The walk has been and is an important recreational space for the inhabitants of the city. Its arrangement in relation to the nucleus, the morphology, the gentle slope, the trees and the special natural environment make it optimal for walks.
Walk improvement and recovery project
The action on the Paseig de la Boca de la Mina aims to condition and dignify a space of great natural, patrimonial and sentimental value in the city and to favor all those uses that contribute to maintaining its identity. This means consolidating its character as a recreational space and setting for sports and health practices that respect the environment, promoting its cultural and historical values, and preserving associated agricultural uses, making it a central piece of actions to preserve the environment.
A new model of promenade
The intention of the proposal is none other than to maintain the current character of the promenade as a recreation area, with soft sauló pavement and where plane trees are the main protagonists of the space. Even so, the proposal seeks to resolve the obvious deficiencies of the existing drainage to ensure that its durability is optimal and, consequently, its maintenance is minimal.
On the other hand, we want to promote the inclusiveness of the walk. For this reason, the new section always incorporates a paved strip. The materiality of this new strip built wants to achieve a perfect integration into the environment with materials that are very present in the collective imagination and culture of Reus. In this sense, paving based on the use of manual brick is proposed, in different sizes and formats to gradually configure the different spaces of the proposal.
A promenade, a sequence of unique points
The promenade presents a sequence of points of great natural, historical and educational interest. The proposal signifies and values all these points, integrating them through different constructive solutions and generating a unitary and coherent story in relation to the new proposal.
As a result of the recognition of these singular points, it has been created in the central point of the Paseo, previously an open field with the only use of punctual parking: a new square that provides new uses and dignifies and improves access to the Mowgli school.
Around this new square there is a new attraction point, the Parc de les Olors: a new place for rest and leisure that connects the walk with the mill ravine. The route system allows you to enjoy a sensory experience in the surroundings of a set of plantations of aromatic species grouped by their color range.
The square also serves as access to the Jardín Agrario del Campo, a new public space structured as an agricultural plot with a productive, educational and promotion function for the typical cultivation of this area.
Boca de la Mina Promenade
Location: Reus, Spain
Landscape Architect: Batlleiroig Arquitectura
Collaborators: SBS Simón i Blanco – Engineering
Client: Ajuntament de Reus
Image Credits: Jordi Surroca
