A Moorish castle, a fortified hill on the edge of the Mediterranean: icon of the citadel. A former, abandoned military site, eroded by floodwaters. The project is a negotiated recapture, by successive strata, element by element: management roles, uses, irrigation and infrastructures, materials and vegetation, exposure to light, views over the town. All these are aspects of a single project, serving a single desire: to establish a new pact with nature by altering its texture in order to provide shade, shelter, views and paths, the matrix for new urban rituals.

Mount Benacantil, an icon landmark in the city, was ambiguous in nature: on the one hand a source of urbanisation, on the other, the heart of the Moorish citadel. Simultaneously heart of the city and isolated like a remote foreign territory. In consequence, the park links two worlds. Raw nature, burned by the sun; the swarming city, hunched at its feet, cosmopolitan and lively
The scheme was assembled in successive strata, discussed and negotiated one by one. The primary management responsibilities, the distribution of functions, the division of investments and major infrastructures, the type of maintenance and the irrigation options were methodically mapped out, in a way that established the possibilities before defining the contours of the sites. The same is true for the degree of naturalness – from urban to "wild"; the ambience of the vegetation; the balance of materials – industrial, rustic – but also the sequencing of frames and horizons.
Each stratum is a distinct point of view on a single object, the park in the process of gestation.
The park is a reconquest of major, but also a pact with it. Every summer, the lower town would be threatened by violent storms, bringing mud and landslides. The gigantic structures required to attenuate these devastating effects – drains, sewers, dry stone walls – create a park full of paths opening to the city and the horizon. Thus, the successive horizontal paths of the slope of olive groves create a series of drains that act like an enormous sponge. The drain-off channel runs alongside the city, forming an inhabited border, a route from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and a view onto the garden for the formerly blind housing terraces. The use of infrastructure as an inherent part of the landscape bears witness to a centuries old legacy that still reflects an economy of resources closely akin to what today we call sustainable development.
In the park, nestled within folds of the almost untouched topography, the buildings open onto panoramic views of Ereta Square: exhibition hall, restaurant, cafeteria… and also a great expanse of shade, shelters for gardeners and park wardens... and, a recent addition, a multipurpose hall linked to the district. The combination of landscape and buildings is designed to offer the city a major cultural amenity: themed exhibitions and lectures, historic tours, archaeological museum, open-air shows and cinema.
All timescales overlap here. The most modern materials mix with the natural stuff of the site: Kerto LVL, stainless steel, pigmented concrete, coexist with sawn or split limestone, solid iroko and softened marble. The familiarity generated between the mass of the natural base and the texture of the park makes the project emerge in the same way as textile patterns emerge from the weave. The occasional alterations to this texture provide shade, shelter, views and paths, a matrix of urban uses.
Everyday city time becomes one with immemorial time. Both locals and visitors experience the shared link that unites contrasted neighbourhoods, can recognise the power of a greater territory, Mediterranean and luminous, opening onto elsewhere.

Award 2006
 “Europan Realisations Prize ”

Commissioned by:
Generalitat Valenciana, City of Alicante
Area: 7.4 acres
Design period: 1995, Europan competition
Construction: 2001-2004
Design and construction: Miguel Salvador Landmann, Architecte - supervising officer (Alicante)
David Chambole - consulting structural engineer wood and steel (Paris)
CYPE - consulting structural engineer concrete (Alicante)
Luis de Diego Fort - quantity surveyor (Alicante)
Ma Dolores Lozano Sánchez - agronomy engineer (Alicante)
CYES S.A. – contractor (Alicante)
Cost: $19.9 million including tax

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