Medellín River Parks | Medellín, Colombia | Sebastian Monsalve Gomez & Juan David Hoyos Taborda

The river currently divides the city in two, which is limited territorially by its condition of Valley. On the Banks of the river, historically, large national routes have been located, which not only divide the city physically and socially but also in terms of environment.

The project intends to integrate engineering, urbanism, and landscape, to create a recomposition of the urban, environmental and social integration of the whole city, promoting sustainable urban redevelopment, and also recovering the memory of the city and water of the Aburra Valley. It is the mechanism to overcome the river as a Wall that fractures the city, trough an urban intervention creating an integrated territory. River as structuring axis of urban public space.

The project seeks to bury the roads of the river corridor in some sectors of the city, in order to get the inhabitants to recover the possibility of approaching the river, which they have not looked at for more than 60 years, seeking to create quality public spaces that promote the citizen encounter in sectors that have been depressed by the development of road infrastructure. River Parks is the opportunity to create a hybrid project between infrastructure and nature, which will restore the quality of habitability to these abandoned spaces on the banks of the river. An urban development project for the implementation of public space and reconstitution of landscape with the most important water system of the city.

The project proposes to promote the ecological system of the city existing in the river’s biotic corridor, due to the implementation of associations of native species on these new public spaces, allowing to enrich the flora and fauna of the city. Nature is then integrated into the road infrastructure, creating a botanical park that articulates the city’s natural systems in an environmental circuit within the Aburrá Valley.

The park seeks to develop environmental awareness, preserve native species of the region, connect the biotic network of the valley and protect it from rapid urban growth. To value the biodiversity of the area and to educate through the public space.

Project Team
Architect leader | Ar. Sebastian Monsalve Gomez
Architectural and Urbam designers | Ar. Sebastian Monsalve Gomez, Ar. Juan David Hoyos Taborda
Landscapes architects | Ar. Nicolás Hermelin, Eng. Luis Vera.
Landscape support team | Ar. Juan Pablo Martinez, Ar. Maria Camila Henao, Ar. Isabel Villegas
Engineer Team | EDL – DIS

About Damian Holmes 3253 Articles
Damian Holmes is the Founder and Editor of World Landscape Architecture (WLA). He is a registered landscape architect (AILA) working in international design practice in Australia. Damian founded WLA in 2007 to provide a website for landscape architects written by landscape architects. Connect on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damianholmes/