The Tudela-Culip (Club Med) resort at Cap de Creus in Cadaqués had been a holiday destination for 900 tourists every summer, but in 1998 the coastal site was given protected status as a Natural Park and the resort was forced to close its doors five years later.

Working alongside over 50 specialist consultants, EMF and Ardèvol were able to deconstruct most of the buildings of the Tudela-Culip and restore the natural landscape amidst a series of architectural interventions.

The most prominent addition to the site is the Cubes Viewpoint, a pair of Corten steel structures facing out to sea, while slabs of stone and more Corten steel were used to create seating areas and landmarks elsewhere around the park.

Pathways are divided into a three-tier hierarchy. The main access road is laid in asphalt, secondary pathways are formed from concrete, and informal routes are defined by ankle-height metal railings.

Small Corten panels scattered around the site feature cutaways that highlight how some of the natural rock formations resemble animals.

The five-year-long project was completed in 2010, but recently received the Rosa Barba European Landscape Prize at the 7 European Biennial of Landscape Architecture.

See more landscape architecture on Dezeen, including a colourful Copenhagen park by BIG and a staggered concrete square in Zaragoza, Spain.

Photography is by Martí Franch, Pau Ardèvol and Esteve Bosc.

Read on for more details from the design team:

Tudela-Culip (Club Med) Restoration Project in the Natural Parc 'Cap de Creus'

This project is a showcase for landscape driven nature restoration projects. It turns a demolition order, a purely and strictly habitat reclamation, into a creative landscape restoration development. Through necessarily inexpensive actions, the design skilfully construes and orchestrates the deconstruction as a combination of destruction and construction to celebrate the site’s peculiarities, both natural and cultural. It proposes ways to choreograph on-site visitors into a narrative that stimulates the culture in nature in an innovative approach to finally question whether erasing and voiding is just as valid as filling in and adding.

Location: Cap de Creus cape, Cadaqués, Catalunya, Spain
Area: 90 ha
Period of design: 2005-2007
Implementation period: 2009-2010

Landscape architects: EMF landscape architects - Martí Franch
Collaborators EMF: M. Batalla, M. Bianchi, A. Lopez, G. Batllori, L. Majer, C. Gomes M. Solé, L. Ochoa, J.L Campoy
Architects: J/T Ardèvol S.L. - Ton Ardèvol
Collaborators Ardèvols: Raul Lopez, Cristina Carmona.

Commissioned by: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Medio Rural y Marino. Generalitat de Catalunya. Gestora de runes de la construcció S.A. Parc Natural del Cap de Creus.

Construction companies:
Tragsa (deconstruction)
Control Demeter and Massachs Excavacions S.L.U. (deconstruction, waste management, Restoration and re-urbanization)
Jardinería Sant Narcís (invasive exotic flora extraction)
Serralleria Ferran Collel (viewpoints, totems, terciary path, animal rock identification)

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News: Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas have won a competition to transform the central railway area of Bari, a city in southern Italy, with a proposal to build a three-kilometre-long elevated park over the track.

The winning design, a collaboration between Fuksas and architect Jordi Henrich I Monràs, stretches over an area of 78 hectares and is centred around a large park that will pass over the railway and offer promenade views over the city and the sea.

The project will also provide Bari with a new cultural centre spread across the former Rossani barracks. Existing buildings will be restored and turned into a public library, an exhibition space, municipal offices and workshops for artists, actors and academics.

A new elliptical building with a wood facade will house a 1000-capacity auditorium adaptable to concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and exhibitions, while underground parking will be provided on the northern edge of the park near the railway station.

In the south-west corner of the park, alongside Bari's existing Auditorium Nino Rota, the architects propose to enlarge the city's music conservatory with a new auditorium and teaching rooms as well as an area for outdoor concerts.

Last month the Fuksas duo won a competition for the Moscow Polytechnic Museum and Educational Centre with a design consisting of four copper-clad elements, while in January they completed a new building for the National Archives of France – see all architecture by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas.

In 2011, a two-and-a-half mile-long elevated park called The High Line opened on abandoned railway along 22 blocks of downtown Manhattan, while last year Danish architects BIG completed a project to place a 750-metre-long carpet of grass and rubber through Copenhagen – see all parks and gardens.

Here's some more information from the architects:

International competition for the "Baricentrale railway area", Italy, won by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas + Jordi Henrich I Monràs

Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas along with Jordi Henrich I Monràs have won the international competition for the design of the railway area "Baricentrale".

The international competition launched by the Municipality of Bari, aimed to promote the transformation of the city, using the reorganisation of the railway area which has long acted as a rift that cuts through the city, as the starting point for its transformation. The site of the project stretches over an area of 78 hectares which is divided into 7 segments.

The decision of the jury in choosing the winning design team came about on the basis of the following main reasons: the ability to fully respond with consistency and quality to the primal need of the city, that of reconnecting the two “sides” of the railway area which have been split apart for so long; the integration of buildings situated on the two sides, through the realisation of a large elevated park; the introduction of an increase of the current building density, balanced and well distributed between the different compartments; the proposal having a high level of environmental sustainability as its main characteristic.

The project signed by Studio Fuksas desires to solve the issue of the fracture of the city of Bari in a radical way through the design of a large city park with promenade views of the city and the sea, which acts as the connective tissue of the entire project. Without burying the rail track, the project aims at the rebirth of a strongly degraded area and pass through a large elevated park, 3 km long with an east-west bike path. A big lung which will double the amount of green for inhabitants, from the current 2.7 m to 5.1 m ab / ab.

The sub-sector of the barrack Rossani, composed of 5 buildings has been assigned an important role. It will become the cultural centre of the city of Bari with spaces for social gatherings in a green area. Existing buildings will be restored without altering the architectural shape. Their function will be related to culture and arts. The building positioned at the center of the park (1400 square meters) will host the municipal offices. The building D will host workshops for artists and fellows of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bari; the building E (2930 sqm) will become the city's public library with specialized sections devoted to the visual arts, theater, music and architecture, the building F (2,184 sqm) is transformed into a huge exhibition space for temporary exhibitions and will support the educational activities of the Academy of Fine Arts. The building H (2890 square meters) will host residencies for artists, actors, contract professors, scholars and students of the academy linked to European programs of cultural exchange. The ground floor will also house a café open to the public and immersed in the park. It will include the construction of an underground parking with 800 seats, located in the northern edge of the Park Rossani near the new Central Station.

At the centre of the regular structure of the barrack will arise the auditorium / performance centre with a capacity of about 1,000 seats. The architectural shape of the elliptical performance center generates a volume from soft geometries that deliberately contrasts with the rigidity of existing buildings. A multi-purpose building that can accommodate a variety of events and activities such as concerts, theater, conferences, exhibitions and film screenings. Common areas, the cafeteria and the foyer are fully glazed in order to create a relationship of continuity between inside and outside. The wood will be the outer skin of the structure of the facade of the building in order to be in harmony with the park and vegetation.

The city of music will be built at the south-west of the park. The function is already defined by the presence of the Auditorium Nino Rota. The existing structure also plays a supporting role at the Conservatory Niccolo Piccinni. The project proposes to shape a genuine city of music providing for the enlargement of about 2000 square meters of the conservatory with a new building that will house a 400-seat auditorium and music school. Furthermore it is also planned to build an area for outdoor concerts with 400 seats. The park of music because of the new structure planned by the master plan is easily accessible from the city centre.

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American architect Louis Kahn was appointed to design the park in 1973 to commemorate the life and work of President Roosevelt, whose seminal Four Freedoms speech in 1941 called for freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Stretching out across the East River at the southernmost tip of Welfare Island, the park was envisioned as a triangular plain that directs a forced perspective towards a statue of the then president.

The architect died shortly after completing the design and funding issues prevented construction for another 38 years, during which time the island was renamed Roosevelt Island. In 2010, as part of the mayor's plans to develop the area into a new residential community, Kahn's plans were put back into action.

The completed park opened to the public on 24 October 2012, with a bronze bust of Roosevelt created by artist Jo Davidson as its focal point.

A granite terrace sits beyond the artwork, creating a contemplative space that Kahn referred to as "The Room".

Five copper beech trees mark the entrance to the park, while two rows of linden trees line the edge of the triangular central lawn.

Louis Kahn is revered as one the greatest architects of the twentieth century. Four Freedoms Park is his final work, but his best-known designs include the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire and the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas.

In 2008 we featured new photographs of Kahn's 1961 project Esherick House, which was just about to be sold at auction.

See more photography by Ty Cole on his website.

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The cruise liner fatally struck a rock off the coast of Giglio Island, Italy, on 13 January, causing the deaths of 30 passengers and becoming the largest passenger ship in history to capsize. A year on, the ship is still in place awaiting a £250 million salvage operation.

The competition, organised by research platform ICSplat, asked architects and designers to come up with alternative proposals for the site, as part of a strategy to reassess how new landscapes can be developed amongst the remains of a traumatic event.

Architectural Association graduates Laing and Belfiore were awarded first place with their proposals, which suggest removing the 35 percent of the boat that rises above the water and adding plants inside the remaining compartments of the former rooms. "The fragment immersed becomes the container of new activities and crossings of the ship among paths, tanks of water and surfaces planted," explain the designers.

Two floating pathways would lead out across the water to create a route for visitors from the coast of the island to the surface of the memorial.

Second place was given to Italian studio Vulmaro Zoffi with designs to generate an artificial reef as a habitat for marine species, while third prize was shared between Francesco Tonnarelli and Andrea Cippitelli of Italy and Architectural Association graduate Wynn Chandra.

The proposals come just over a year after two memorial fountains opened on the site of the former World Trade Centre. Watch a movie about the plans for the 9/11 site here.

See all our stories about memorials »

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Above: raised walkways and gardens are proposed for Futian District

Landscape architecture and urban planning firm SWA Group hopes to transform the congested and car-dominated district of central Shenzhen into a calmer, greener space where pedestrians are welcome.

As part of SWA's masterplan, titled Garden City of Tomorrow, residential streets will be made over with exercise areas for all age groups as well as quieter green spaces.

Office streets will incorporate gardens with seating areas, while retail streets will encourage pedestrian traffic with public art and better lighting.

A botanical garden in the shape of a circuit board, representing the Chinese city's electronics industry, has been proposed for a space alongside the Civic Center.

Three existing parks divided by major roads will be linked by a raised landscape of walkways, cycle paths and gardens called the Bridge Park.

Above: a botanical garden has been proposed alongside Shenzhen Civic Center

"Our landscape and urban design strategies will rebalance Futian from a car-dominated city with a challenging street system to offer a more beautiful, more functional environment, from landscaped boulevards and greenspaces to plazas and large gathering spaces," said Sean O'Malley, the principal leading the masterplan from SWA Group's office in Laguna Beach, California.

The first phase of construction is expected to begin in the second half of 2013, with completion by autumn 2014.

Futian is home to the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, where we made a series of movies in 2009, including one about a project to build a farm in a city square and another looking at an installation of 10,000 garments manufactured in Shenzhen.

Other projects in Shenzhen we've featured recently include a registry office that looks like its covered in confetti and the Kingkey 100 skyscraper, the tallest building in the city.

See all our stories about Shenzhen »
See all our stories about masterplans »

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