Diagonal Mar

Avenida Diagonal
Barcelona, Spain

Contributed by Project for Public Spaces

Lauded as "urban regeneration", this development makes many of the same mistakes of urban renewal.

Why It Doesn't Work

We were sorely disappointed – and disturbed – at this development. People had told us that it was the future of Barcelona; if this is so, then Barcelona is in serious danger.

Diagonal Mar is good planning, architecture and landscape architecture in only the narrowest senses of these disciplines. We like to think this park was designed by lawyers, who have taken all preventative measures necessary to ensure nothing can happen here. The residential towers are isolated in empty plazas which give you the impression that you are only meant to drive up to them (in fact, we only saw cars going to and from them). The uses are all separated within the development, and even within the park area efforts have been made to cut off uses from each other.

The design of the buildings and shopping center also contribute to the “look but don’t touch” attitude. Unfriendly to anything but cars, the high rise buildings seem to exert their ownership and control over the vast park areas. Deemed a mixed-use development, the only pedestrian oriented area is inside a large, blank-walled, suburban style mall with a retail plaza on the roof.

The landscape architecture, while replete with novelty, natural beauty, ecological design, public art, games, recreation and aesthetic quality, never rises past a series of abstract, limited and disconnected experiences. For example, at no place can you really connect directly with the natural environment, to the extent that nowhere can one touch the plentiful water. Particularly offensive is the fact that at no place are you invited to linger or connect with others, as activity areas and amenities when provided, are isolated from each other and decidedly unaccommodating. Lastly, there is limited invitation to stroll through this park let alone the surrounding streets. The entrances are extremely weak, there are no real destinations and the path system seems built only to support the imposing design statements of the contrived “natural features”, the incomprehensible public art, and the large voids surrounding the building foot prints.

It is an accomplishment to have spent this much energy and money and not have created any spaces that have the potential to take on a life of their own, to support cultural, social or economic activity or to simply attract more people. The many ecological design and green building achievements seem rather unimportant in the context of a development that fails at its fundamental purposes. However, what is most apparent and most unfortunate, is that this development and its abundant open space are almost entirely placeless.

History & Background

Excerpted from: www.geographyfieldwork.com/DiagonalMarInternationalForum2004Problems.htm

Diagonal Mar - the issues

• To Barcelona's Mayor, Joan Clos, Diagonal Mar is an urban development disaster, despite winning an Urban Land Institute Award for Excellence. Clos has blamed low density planning for the lack of social and economic life in the district.

There are few people on the streets and public space, shops or bar terraces are little used by the neighbours. According to Clos, Diagonal Mar's housing densities of 48 dwelling per hectare do not contribute to building a sense of the city. Density determines the nature of community life and the kind of city created. Future projects should involve the recovery of higher levels of density.

• The developments are geared to the upper echelon foreign visitors and the younger middle and higher income groups rather than the needs and desires of an increasingly ageing permanent population.

• The success of Diagonal Mar may rely on the reversal of counter-urbanisation trends prevalent within Barcelona (and all western cities).

• Diagonal Mar is effectively a gated community, with a semi-private atmosphere. This has generated distrust amongst neighbouring communities. The park and buildings are surrounded by large fences that that create a sense of exclusion. At night, when the gates are locked, the district becomes a barrier, effectively sealing off access to the sea for inland communities. more

• The sense of social isolation created by Diagonal Mar has led the organisation Project for Public Spaces to describe the Park as one ' designed by lawyers, a place where no spontaneous, unforeseen event can ever happen. It's a classic case of design run amok, where creating a place for human use was merely an afterthought.'

• Is Barcelona really ready for a revolution in shopping habits? The local markets are still thriving, convenience foods are difficult to find, many of the young remain at home until their late twenties, and the traditional family unit, although under increasing threat, is still strong. Currently, only 12% of Barcelonans use their car to go shopping.

• Diagonal Mar caters to a hedonistic lifestyle, criticised by Jordi Pujol (the former leader of the autonomous government) amongst others.

• Diagonal Mar relies on direct road access from Ronda Litoral (exit 24). This area of motorway sees queues of 5 kilometres or more build up on a regular basis. In addition, this stretch of motorway is largely tunnelled - an uninviting prospect or regular queuing and a potential safety hazard.

User Comments:

> Add your own comment about Diagonal Mar

04/06/04 Maria-José Anía said:

I think it's unfair to include "Parc Diagonal Mar" in the Hall of Shame. If there is a problem with this park is that it's brand new and too recent -so is the neighbourhood around! That's why it might look lifeless, with vegetation still too young. Design is just extraordinary, based on sustainable criteria. This park only needs time to be recognized as a great place.

05/03/04 Jeremy Chadwick said:

I would agree that at the moment, Parc Diagonal Mar is not as good as some other parks in Barcelona (e.g. Ciutadella, Parc del Clot) but it has something very valuable at the moment (April 2004) which I haven't noticed elsewhere in Barcelona - the man-made wetlands in the middle are teeming with frogs, and the air is filled with their calls, which add a whole extra level of sensory experience. You feel surrounded by nature to a greater extent than you would if surrounded only by plants.

07/28/04 toni soler said:

As the comments above state, this is a brand new park, so the gardens are not at their full beauty, while some parts of it are still to be completed.

Recently, new animal species such as migratory birds, moved (by themselves) to the park as it is a clean and sustainable environment. I think this fact alone is a huge success.

Next to the park, a new neighbourhood has arisen, with a different approach than the usual Barcelona one. The formula used here consists in the mixture of high rise buildings and vast green extensions. This criteria may well be criticized, but it is still too soon, in my opinion, to analyze its effect on the public space. As the area in which the park was settled was already surrounded by tall cheap construction of the 70's, the creation of this new neighbourhood has become an exciting experimentation area in which social integration should play a major role for the public space to work out well. The greatest danger in the area is not the park, but the giant urban shopping mall that desertizes its surrounding areas as it only has two main entrances.

I agree with the authors on how uncomfortable the sitting areas are, and the barriers that keep water and people apart.

I would like to add that the park has a fairly well used playground area for kids and a free open air basketball, football, and table tennis courts which are highly used on weekends. Next to it there is a new beach and in some years a new maritime zoo will be installed in its waterfront side.

I hope some improvements could be done when all the area construction comes to an end and the non working areas are finally detected.

03/07/06 Ethan Kent said:

I just got back from a visit here (the third PPS staff visit in three years) and left feeling very depressed about the future of cities.

Diagonal Mar will not improve with time. It is an upscale ghetto now and, was it not for its location on the waterfront, threatens to resemple a full blown slum in the near future. With no natural support for other uses to prevail and overwhelming domination from the private housing development, it could easily be taken over by undesirable activity.

When one looks past all the hype and high design, there is little that separates this from a tower-in-the-park 60s style housing project. Let us hope this does not spawn a new round of urban renewal euphemized as urban regeneration.

03/07/06 Carolyn Konheim said:

I totally agree about Diagonal Mar and the megamalls that preceded it being a disaster. The first phase was terrific--many restauants, volleyball on the beach and a real swimming beach in the city. This was barricaded by an entirely paved "extension" of the pedestrian Ramblas, dominated by garage ramps, multi-plex cinemas and a disappointing aquarium that mock waterfront uses and access to the water--even visual access. My friends in Barcelona were amazed at how it all went up overnight. It all seems to be the product of a French company that was contracted to develop the whole thing--a la ESDC's plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park.

03/01/07 raf a said:

Diagonal Mar it`s a park in a particular place of a mayor urban proyect. An that's the poin of start in any description and intent to critizise it. Miralles, evidently an heir of Gaudí minucious work with te space an the surfaces, acomplises to create a park that exceed the private fate of the sorrounding area and is capable to introduce a new geography and the posibility of the public life. these new geograpy precedes the coast introducing the wather iside the city, these multiform water gives the precence of the wildernes in the park. Evidently the park is on a low populated area, and in a peripheric place of barcelona. that is the reason of the aparently abandoned ocupation. the difficulyes of the park do not reside in the desingn any parck in these conditions would fail. Acording to the article Versailles is a fiasco.

10/19/08 Nathan Asire said:

I think your assessment of Diagonal Mar is too negative. As an architecture student, I lived and studied in Barcelona for a semester in 2004. As part of my coursework, I did case studies of many of the parks and public spaces in Barcelona and was grievously disappointed with them in general - until I came to Parc Diagonal Mar. I will agree I was skeptical when I stepped off Diagonal into a concrete jungle of large spidery sculptural forms - "oh boy, another architect trying to make a statement", I thought. But as I progressed through the park with my classmates, the landscape slowly started to peel away our thick skins of architectural criticism. The ponds were a welcome element (regardless of the fact that you couldn't easily touch the water) because this was the only public place I'd found in the city that had ANY substantial amount of water. The ponds had reeds and green grasses growing around the edges, the first hint of anything natural that I'd seen in months. As we walked across a bridge, we came to several man-made grassy hills that a multitude of children were rolling down over, and over, and over... yes, even we joined them. Next to that were large slides that fit into the hillside. I have to admit, they did not get the coefficient of friction figured out on these, and we had to scoot down them on our butts. Atop one of these knolls, we had a refreshing breeze and an elevated view of our surroundings, two more things that can't be found anywhere in the downtown, and this mountain girl was poignantly craving. Across to another part of the park, we found a delightful music garden with chimes, whistles, and many other instruments that were played by jumping from tile to tile. We had to wait in line behind the small children who were thoroughly partaking of these delights. Tire swings, jumglejims and other stlyized playground equipment was also to be found. Some abstractly shaped concrete forms scattered about the grassy areas appeared at first to be merely useless sculptural forms, but we found that they could accommodate several sleepy adults sprawled in a variety of different afternoon-nap style positions. We progressed right on up to the rocky seaside and enjoyed the spray coming off the Mediterranean. All in all, I was taken greatly by surprise by this gem of a park - its natural elements, musical toys, relaxed nap-able areas, and variety in general as well as its size (this was the biggest park i had found in BCN) all made for a very memorable day. While there is certainly place for criticisms of this park, I think it was an overall success, and should be considered in its context, by someone who has lived in the city and understands the precedents and the obstacles to creating good public spaces in this city. I would love to see you send somebody back and do another analysis of this park, and see what happens. Also another question: did you go on a sunny day or a rainy day?

11/07/09 Stavros Martinos said:

I'll second that the commentary on Diagonal Mar park is quite harsh. It was unfortunate that such a fun and well thought-out landscape project was placed in the middle of urban disaster zone, but, in my point of view (and after having found myself willing to play in there!), it's the only breath of fresh air around.