Beginnings and endings are just as critical as what comes between. In memory they are the easiest to recall, and the first thing that comes to memory is a performance by the dance troupe Pilobolus. The sounds of an airplane crashing out of the sky first come bursting through the speakers. This helps explains why, when the lights finally come up, a performer is lying on his shoulders and head with his feet sticking into the air. With little effort and no speaking we now have a complete picture of the performer as a stranded pilot.
In architecture, beginnings and endings most apparently take place at an entrance or exit, but a work of architecture may commence when you arrive from the metro or step out of your car, or even catching sight of it from a distance. The promenade of a project, then, might include spaces distantly connected to, or even disconnected from, the designed place. Two Barcelona parks, the Southeast Coastal Park by Foreign Office Architects, and the Northeast Coastal Park by Abalos & Herreros, are vast territories of land where beginnings and endings are as critical as a performance. Here I will look at the conceptual basis for these parks, the intention of the design, and how the parks are used today.
Parc del Forum
In 2004 Barcelona was home to an immense cultural forum, the Universal Forum of Cultures, requiring the creation of a number of buildings and public spaces to house activities of near-Olympic proportion. The Northeast and Southeast Coastal parks lie to the north and south of the Parc del Forum, an immense paved area with two elevated octagonal-shaped solar arrays and a collection of support buildings. All three areas were constructed between 2000 and 2004. The later addition of a massive Torres & Lapena elevated rectangular solar array, known as the Pergola Fotovoltaica, was designed in 2009 to not only provide electric power but to frame sweeping views of the Mediterranean. Other new additions include Enric Massip-Bosch Arquitectes’ Diagonal 00 Tower, and Zaha Hadid's Spiral Tower, both adjacent to the Forum.
Southeast Coastal Park
Foreign Office Architects points out that the entrance to the Southeast Coastal Park is located at Carrer Taulat (Locus)-- a road that runs parallel to the park, with a single point of access divided by the blue triangle of the derelict H&dM Edifici Forum. There is no direct path to the park-- the “arm” of the Forum-- so a visitor must traverse the vast Forum esplanade on the north side. Beachgoers, though, will find it easier to access the park from the south. With a highly visible pedestrian overlook constructed near the south entrance and visible from Taulat, it is just as likely for a visitor to make his way to the south end of the park after taking in the sights.
There is ambiguity, then, as to which side of the park is the intended 'entrance,' so it would be simpler to consider them both. Arriving from the south end, unfortunately, is a very tight pinch along a gated service road followed by an abrupt hard turn. My first impression was that of an unfinished project, with pavers and skateboarder railings extending into a vehicular barrier, followed by a raised edge. The long unbroken lines of the paving and boardwalk imply a place that should stretch past its own boundaries. If this is intended to imply a Miesian sense of continuity beyond the limits of the park, that sense is broken by raised paving edges. With a construction site to the south immediately followed by the beach, it is possible that the city intends for the south park to continue into the beach.
Following the Forum Building on the north side brings you to a large open esplanade where you can circle around to the top of the larger of the park's two auditoriums, a view of the sea opening below you. The real activator for the park is not in fact the park itself but a hardscape swimming area that lies between the park and the sea. The directional orientation of pathways through the park give the place a sense of linear, albeit curvaceous, circulation, and the gently sloped retaining walls used by bicyclists and skateboarders for play seem to bring the only visitors who actually stop to use the park. I suspect if it wasn't for the bathing area, the park might not be used at all.
The formal strategy, according to FOA (Locus), is dune-like, and for this they are successful; the 'dunes' of hardscape slope up and crest to ''scrub,' trees and hardy plants reminiscent of the grasses you might find growing near the ocean. The sense of place, that of a beach, feels very appropriate whether or not dunes (or for that matter, sand) may have existed on the site, and the park and swimming area-- all hardscape-- reinforce each other beautifully.
The programmatic strategy of “playspace” feels successful; as a retired skateboarder I found myself wishing for a little time on the slopes and rails. With the exception of the ampitheatre, however, the program seems more like “interesting corridor” with things for skateboarders and bikers to play on while they're coming or going. Foreign Office also refers to the use of paving patterns as a means to generate lines of force throughout the site, but a strong idea that looks good from a distance (the swirl of the paving by the ampitheatre that suggests a place of repose) is poorly detailed. They set rows of circular pavers into asphalt, with gaps between each row thus showing off the asphalt, and my sense is that they're relying on the contrast between materials to generate the lines. Peter Reed agrees, noting that “the pavers create strong graphic striations that draw the visitor's attention back to the ground plane.” (Groundswell, Northeast.) Never mind the intense difficulty the city will have when it comes time to maintain the site. When ground services such as mountings for furniture or electrical boxes touch the horizontal plane, pavers are simply removed and there is no real alignment or any other means to make the interaction between 'object' and 'surface' a well-though detail. These 'lines of force' are thus rudely broken and the fluidity of movement interrupted.
Northeast Coastal Park
Unified to the palm of the esplanade through the fingers of, in plan, a hand-like form, the Northeast Coastal park is a restored brownfield program of views created with infill, and attached to the massive earthworks through the connective tissue of a bridge are a plaza, park, a beach, and the remainders of an industrial plant turned to a recycling plant. Abalos & Herreros consider wasteland as a commodity or place of opportunity (Journey, 55), and seek “a new naturalism arising from the profound ambiguity in which nature is presented as the subject of knowledge and aesthetic experience.” (57) 
The problem is, the “mountains” that they refer to are not the masses overlooking the park from the docks-- the natural pedestrian promenade from the Forum esplanade. It is two small hills on the northern end of the park accessible via the parking lot. This area, bordered by a highway on one side of the hill and a busy road on the other side closest to the plant, is decidedly less friendly than the bridge route, and is perhaps the better promenade if a visitor were to arrive by car. The earthworks manage to protect the site from the noisy highway, but the path to the complex is via sidewalks on either side of the road. We are left with a site located at the northernmost point of Barcelona and bordered by: the Balearic Sea, a river outlet, a parking lot and highways, and the Forum. In this isolated condition at the end of a metro line and about a mile from the nearest residential neighborhood, the small population of the beach and plaza are unsurprising and bring to the area a deserted feel.
Among the writings of Abalos & Herreros, the idea of sustainability comes up time and again, and they consider the park “an expression of the sensitivity towards environmental issues and cultural admixtures that gives [this project] context...” (Urbarama) An ideal condition is presented by the industrial plant, as a political message to the city reinforced by a building that can be disassembled then reassembled in a new configuration or remove unnecessary components for recycling. The restoration of an industrial site to public use is commendable, as is the use of recyclable plastic building materials.
The issue I take with declaring that a site is sensitive to the environment is that the designer should not be selective about the environmental issues he wants to consider, and instead make an effort to consider every environmental issue. While the project began design in 2000, in the infancy of the contemporary “green movement,” the more sustainable gesture would nonetheless include creating a walkable connection to the urban fabric, with deference to public transportation. Barcelona herself has been a walkable city ever since the Romans set up the original castrum-based town, and even in an era of cheap energy the idea of a main promenade sprouting from a remote parking lot along and across a busy highway is contrary to any argument for sustainability. Peter Reed buys into their argument, pointing out that mature palm trees were planted in order to “create an immediate sense of place,” forgetting to point out the enormous energy costs of trucking mature trees to a site, and neglecting to point out that in as immense a public space as this park, a smattering of a couple hundred palm trees does nothing to protect visitors from the sun. (57) Barcelona again offers precedents in such notable places as the Passatge de Gaiola (image e), the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, or the Passaeig de Gracia, all densely planted with large-canopy deciduous shade trees.
The idea of limiting urban sprawl in the year 2000 was not as popular an idea as it is now ten years later. Andres Rubio discusses how Abalos & Herreros seek out development of suburban sites (61), refering to projects like the Northeast park as, “the wasteland beyond the outer suburbs.” This is an important ecological idea, as it is our sprawling suburbs that, when they begin showing their age and in need of repair, can be given a new life as good walkable environments.
The Future of the Forum
That the Forum is adjacent to a large shopping mall (somewhat rare in Barcelona) should come as no surprise. William Whyte, in his book “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,” discusses the megafortress, large masses of buildings that turn inward and engage themselves rather than their surroundings. The idea of the indoor mall is typical of the era that the Forum was considered, and while the mall is not directly related to the problems of the Forum it is in fact an indicator of the urban ideas put into use at the time.
Making space, quite literally the design of nothing, is sculpting the surroundings of a given area with things which help us perceive the shape of the space we are given to occupy. A desert can feel desolate because it is nothing but space, without any means of enclosure to give us comfort. Too much enclosure, however, and we begin to feel claustrophobic. The size of enclosure must be carefully balanced with the needs of the space. The Piazza of San Pietro, in Vatican City, is an enormous space that can fit something like 300,000 people, yet it never feels uncomfortably large since it is constantly occupied by thousands of tourists, as well as more massive throngs for special occasions. On the other hand, the esplanade at the main entrance to Park Guell feels about a tenth the size of Vatican's Square, but with hundreds of tourists filling the space it is uncomfortably difficult to move about. Whyte, discusses the ideas of human relationships in designed space, where despite our desire for solace we actually seek each other out:
“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people... How many people would say they like to sit in the middle of a crowd? Instead, they speak of getting away from it all, and use words like "escape", "oasis", "retreat". What people do, however, reveals a different priority. “ (19)
This brings us to some dramatic similarities in the two parks hinged together at the Forum: all of the large designed spaces are uncomfortably large. While these spaces occasionally play host to large-scale activities and events, by and large both parks suffer from a lack of traffic to properly activate the parks and make them worthwhile. The city planners may have recognized the need to bring people to the outskirts of the city considering the new highrises coming under construction inside the Forum where everything is accessible and walkable. Once the city brings density to the Forum, it would be worth a second trip to see how well the parks have fared.
Works Cited:
Abalos, Inaki, and Juan Herreros. "Environmental Complex Coast Park North-East [FR]." Urbarama - Atlas D'architecture. Web. 31 May 2010.
Abalos, Inaki, and Juan Herreros. ""Journey Through the Picturesque." Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape. London: Architectural Association, 2003. 52-57. Print.
Moussavi, Farshid, and Alejandro Zaera Polo. "Parque De Los Auditorios." Locus 125 (2005): 92-95. Print.
Reed, Peter. Groundswell - Constructing the Contemporary Landscape. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2005. Print.
Whyte, William Hollingsworth. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. New York: Project for Public Spaces, 2001. Print.
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