Paraná River Promenade Competition
2nd prize
This proposal is located in an area of the Paraná River that has endured significant erosion due to the presence of one of its main channels immediately next to the coast. Throughout the years, this process had pushed the cut bank dangerously close to the historic riverside promenade built in the early 1900s at the city of Parana, threatening to also take the adjacent road and destabilize the hills at the park that runs alongside this stretch of the stream.
Prior to 2000, the World Bank sponsored the construction of a defense system to protect that portion of the coast from further erosion and stabilize the patrimonial landscaping in the area, and then the City decided to open an urban and architectural competition for the design of a new promenade, parallel to the existing, in order to regain the area for the enjoyment of the public.
This was one of two proposals submitted by the team and consisted, similarly to the other, of a series of platforms at varying levels, smoothly connected by means of low grade ramps that negotiate the level difference between the existing sidewalk and the finish grade of the engineered barrier infill.
The purpose is to allow not only for an easy flow of the pedestrians but also the water that is estimated to cover the lowest levels of the new park due to the periodic flows that naturally occur in this region.
To some extent, in this proposal it was emphasized the predominance of a more linear composition, with flowing angles and planes treated in their pure form, intending to release the space from any physical or visual obstacle, except for the location of one segment reserved for a monument that raises vertically as a group of freestanding columns above seventy feet providing some sense of the vast scale of this landscape.