Jardinet de Sant Antoni

Since 2017, with the presentation of the Sant Antoni Action Plan, the neighborhood has determinedly taken on the role of becoming an example of the new city model we want: a laboratory for the first green axes around the market—on Comte Borrell, Tamarit, and Parlament streets—and two new squares—at the intersections of Comte Borrell with Tamarit, and Borrell with Parlament streets—through tactical urbanism. With these initial actions, combined with the free areas of the market, approximately 25,000 m² of space for pedestrians were gained in a neighborhood that has historically had a significant lack of public spaces. The result of the experience is that the Superilla de Sant Antoni has led to a significant improvement in environmental conditions, an increase in pedestrian traffic, and greater dynamism in community activities.

This experience, along with the implementation of Superilles in the Eixample —which already include four streets and four squares—, has generated a lexicon of the city's public space, new forms of materiality and activity that already shape the identity of a new urban model. In this context, the present ideas competition not only represents a consolidation of the collective learning resulting from these processes but also presents an opportunity to expand the palette of solutions for a new visual alphabet of the city's public spaces. It is a stage in which the new squares will play the role of central elements in the transformation, as they are the spaces that offer the greatest capacity for change and are established with the intention of becoming a new reference point in the urban space.

Our proposal, Jardinet de Sant Antoni, is more than just a plaza with vegetation: it is a community garden, a garden-plaza that invites community members to experience, flow, connect, and care for both people and nature. In this neighborhood garden, a richer and more porous soil, a network of small-statured trees, plant beds with a wide variety of Mediterranean species, and a singular tree form the basis of the new environmental and emotional infrastructure that helps to pause time and promote lingering and play. El Jardinet is a space of microcentrality where nature and culture connect, a playful and pedagogical space that fosters intergenerational convergence. A place where the pieces and the topographies of rest and play trace a choreography with the vegetation arranged in three strata: arboreal, shrub, and herbaceous. This structuring transformation allows for the consolidation of functional, habitability, greenery, and biodiversity changes in the new public space.

In this garden around a tree, the world is complete: experiencing it intensely is as beneficial as a walk in the forest. Everyone has their own way of learning; it just takes encouraging the senses to be attentive and open. In this sense, the design proposal for the new square aims to create a flexible, tranquil, comfortable, and playable space. In short, a place connected and coherent with the Superilles; safe, accessible, and inclusive; with a small, flexible, playful, and identity-driven centrality; and biologically diverse, cultural, and educational.