CAPÇALERA PARK
I live in street alcacer, and this park is just next to me, it is a riverside green space offering the ample shade of pine trees, boat trips and bars in which to enjoy tapas in the spring sun. A small hill located within the park also offers splendid views of the city.
Next to the Park, the recently-inaugurated Bioparc offers an environmental alternative in which to spend an excellent day in the company of lemurs, zebras, elephants and lions within an atmosphere that takes us directly to the heart of Africa.
The park covers over a kilometre of the former bed of the River Turia, in an area between the edge of the city and the surroundings. The idea for the park was to turn this space into a riverside wood, typical of the environs of Mediterranean rivers, blending vegetation, topography and water. This strategy helped to solve the transition between the rigid embankments of the River Turia, built in the 18th century to protect the city from flash floods, and the natural riverbed upstream. The water, the vegetation, the topography and the dry stone walls are the structuring features on which the concept of the park is based.
The layout is a reference to the sinuous shapes of the little islands that formed when the river rose. Depending on the character of the different areas of the park, these islands are small hills on dry land covered in vegetation, slopes that enter the water or true islands in the lake. The oval lookout hill, the highest point of the park, constitutes its visual landmark and solves the difficult change in direction in the old river bed, which has a 90º bend before being channelled through the entire city down to the sea.
Why did you choose this place?
Because being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.
What makes you comfortable?
There is some evidence that exposure to nature impacts the brain. Viewing natural beauty activates specific reward circuits in the brain associated with dopamine release that give us a sense of purpose, joy, and energy to pursue our goals. It makes me feel safe and connected to nature.
There is some disruptive element?
For now, I don’t feel like there are some disruptive elements, this park is just perfect for me.
Do you think you’d feel the same way in another space right now?
I don’t think so, this park is so uniquely beautiful, it helps me to reduce anxiety, brooding, and stress, and increase my attention capacity, creativity especially when it comes to art and painting.
Do you think that the conditions of this space influence its occupants? How?
From within, you can feel nature as a call to connect, to nourish aliveness by communing with others. You can think of it as your own Higher Self. … The Higher Self can never be truly lost because it is knit into life, and we all are an instance of life, every cell in each one of us.
ATMOSPHERES:
Winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture 2009, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is considered to be one of the most extraordinary and controversial architects working today.
Atmospheres is a poetics of architecture and a window into Zumthor’s personal sources of inspiration. In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his buildings: images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him.
From the composition and “presence” of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, Atmospheres enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design. Peter Zumthor describes what really constitutes an architectural atmosphere as «this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty…under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way.»
Delving deep into the mind and process of one of the centuries greatest architects, Atmospheres is a must-read for all aspiring and established architects as well as any individuals interested in architecture.
Quality architecture to me is when a building manages to move me. What on earth is it that moves me? How can I get it into my own work?
-Peter Zumthor
