aldayjover, Parque del Agua, Zaragoza, 2005-2008

The relationship between cities and their rivers has been tense and conflictive since time inmemorial. Rivers – access to fresh water to drink or to irrigate the fields with – are the primary raison d’être of human settlements. But while an essential resource, the river is a major danger when it swells. All cultures and periods have left pictorial record of this duality: images of catastrophes as well as of the boons associated with these geographic entities, both real and mythical (e.g., the goddess Ganga of the Ganges). Western culture has tried to turn rivers (living beings, oscillating ones) into stable, safe, controlled canals by means of levees, dikes, dams, or channels against which watercourses rebel every now and then, overflowing as it is in their nature to do, and with sometimes fatal consequences on the lives of the inhabitants of their banks. Climate change and massive urbanization have exacerbated the frequency and violence of floods as much as their repercussions, highlighting the need to redefine the relationship between cities and rivers.

One of the first projects in recent times to address floodable public space was carried out between 1999 and 2001, in the Zaragoza municipality of Zuera, by the firm aldayjover. The park on the sides of the Gállego, a tributary of the Ebro, eliminated a garbage dump and reconnected a river forest to the urban core, in addition to integrating a multipurpose bullring in such a way that took seasonal inundations into consideration. Its innovative character earned the European Prize for Urban Public Space, and the project was the only completed one presented at the Internationale Architectur Biënnale Rotterdam in 2004, themed ‘The Flood’ with the objective of sparking a debate in the Netherlands in line with ‘Room for the River,’ a large-scale operation aimed at augmenting the draining capacity of the Rhine delta...[+]