The project Arrecife. The capital of the Biosphere Reserve aims to align the urban planning of the island’s capital with the principles of Lanzarote’s declaration as a Biosphere Reserve.
Historically, the locals have known how to store the rainwater that ran off on its way to the sea. Today, anti-nature urban planning has replaced ancestral ingenuity with modern clumsiness: the city floods twice a year. Inspired by Lanzarote’s innovative relationship with its arid nature, the project is committed to recovering (and, if necessary, proposing alternatives) the routes of the old runoffs. The result is four corridors that cross the city from north to south: Los Caminos del Agua (the Water Paths).
The Water Paths are green infrastructures in the form of landscaped walkways that capture, filter and store rainwater. They perform as sponges, thus preventing flooding. The four Water Paths intersect with the two roads around the city. The result is two infrastructures, one “green” and one “grey”, resulting in four linear parks crossing the city’s two urban roads. The Water Paths start in a bio-retention park that improves the low provision of open spaces in the upper part of the city. The intersections of the two infrastructures result in the Nodes-Plazas: public spaces equipped with shaded areas and vegetation that serve as open-air transport interchanges.
