Architecture folds into the landscape

Is not yet a "tendency", and not even yet a "trend", but it seems that to this years' jury of the architectural FAD prize (Promotion of the Decorative Arts) a door opens towards an architecture more respectful with the landscape. Mainly two of the winner works (Architecture and City and Landscape) would be, each of them in its own way, a reflection of this switch in mentality. In the first case, the prize for Architecture has been given to the young Portuguese architect Joao Maria Trinidade for his Garducho Biological Station (Mourao, Portugal). As Arcadi Pla (president of the jury) tells us, the huge mass of the building stands out in the middle of the natural reserve where is located. "But the interesting part is that the building lifts itself from the ground, allowing the free pass of nature both flora and fauna", Says Pla. "This way it becomes in some kind of tree from where to observe and at the same time welcome the nature of the site".
*Garducho Biological Station by VenturaTrinidade architects, photos by Andre Carvalho/Jose Manuel Silva

The project winner of the City and Landscape category, aims to minimize the presence of the construction and chooses to work mainly with the water fluxes and the variation of the flora. We are talking about the Park of the Waters in Zaragoza, from architects Iñaki Alday and Margarita Jover. The Jury mentions that is an "emblematic project because of the sustainable landscape-solution used". It is the recovery of an abandoned and derelict meander of the Ebro River which has been transformed into a recreational and educational area.
*images of the Park of the Waters in Zaragoza

The prizes which where given on Friday at Barcelona, had also recognized in the Ephemeral Interventions chapter, in the work "Miramiralls", a ludic installation with deforming mirrors that the team of Dani Freixas did in the Tibidabo Park (Barcelona).
*detail of the miramiralls installation by Dani Freixas

To this 51st edition of the FAD prize, which has no economical prize, 522 works applied. In june where selected as finalists just 27 of them. "It has been a very small selection, but we feel it represents what is happening in the present. We start to see where is the architecture of the future going to", said also Arcadi Pla. "More than the sustainability of buildings itself, there is a switch of philosophy in the way of understanding where the architecture places in the landscape. Its footprint is becoming more and more subtle".
*Garducho Biological Station by VenturaTrinidade architects, photos by Andre Carvalho/Jose Manuel Silva