This garden in Madrid was designed by new Spanish firm Estudio Caballero Colón for a nursing home.
Beds of hardy plants are bordered with crushed material reclaimed from roads, while swirling concrete footpaths are coated with crushed recycled glass set in resin.
The outdoor space was created for La Paz nursing home on the former site of cellars belonging to the city’s health service.
Photographs are by Miguel de Guzmán.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
La Paz Nursing Home Garden
At first, the assignment was the demolition of the cellars of the Madrid Regional Service of Health´s Old Building. However, the possibility of using this ground as a part of the nursing home “La Paz” led to the accomplishment of a small garden with the minimum possible elements and at a very low cost.
In our view, the garden, as nature manipulated by man, finds its beauty in a strange balance between the diffuse and diverse character of the nature, and the clearness and unity of the artifice. In designing the distribution of plants and paths, we looked for an intelligible organization in order to enhance that contrast. As a kind of enlarged graffitti, a series of blotches in different colors with winding shapes establishes in a clear way the three types of grounds: plantation, drainage and paths.
The plants were chosen in consideration of their strength (given the inclemencies of the weather and the urban contamination) and their low water consumption. For this reason our choice was: lavandula angustifolia, salvia officinalis, callistemon viminalis and festuca.
With the same purpose of fighting the deterioration of our natural enviroment, we tried to use as much as possible recycled materials. Thus, instead of the usual gravel under the reinforced concrete we used crushed recycled concrete; the necessary rugosity to prevent slippery surfaces when it rains was obtained by mixing the resin with recycled glass (which produces unexpected brightness and iridescence under the sunlight), and the dark gravel for drainage between the paths and plantation areas is crushed material of demolished roads.
See also:
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| Parque do Ibirapuera by Oscar Niemeyer |
CDSea by Bruce Munro |
Medical Herbman Café Project by EARTHSCAPE |
It’s a very hard space. Not very welcoming, no shade. I’d find the bright concrete quite dazzling in the madrid sun probably. It wouldn’t be my first choice for recuperation
Nice but it needs trees. Madrid is extremely hot in summer.
Lovely, but not much in the way of shade?
It is very exposed, there seems little by way of shelter from the sun. I agree with the previous comment on the reflectiveness of the concrete, it is awful in bright sunshine.
Where is the romance?
Older folk need love seats for 2 too.
Ummm … Burle Marx much….
Miss Madrid and the whole landscape! Well excuted! Although would be nice with some tress as shades!
Lonely & isolating. This is awful.
agree…burle marx with more green
if the garden there is a high and shady trees might be more cold and cool, but I liked the design as it is for winter or spring, in my opinion not suitable for summer,:):) just a comment not meant to change the order which has been there is
hot will relect from the floor..
To be fair Madrid is also a fairly cold city (around 0ºC-10ºC) in the winter and you might just freeze in the shade. The lack of shade might also be a knee-jerk reaction to the (by some people much hated) Barcelona tradition of “hard landscaping” with metal pergolas and such, which was very influential in Spain as well. Still I don’t really like this, and I don’t like that from the air it looks Burle Marx-ish but it doesn’t really play with differently coloured/textured plants like he did (but then again I guess this is a low budget, low maintenance kind of thing…)
How do you know that? Do you work with them?
Lovely! Great to see them using recycled materials. It would be great if they added trees, like others have mentioned. Or perhaps some pretty, colorful flowers?