plaza dos de mayo. madrid

Motto: tree_es
The idea is simple: plant more trees.
The plaza area now has 50 trees, to which 82 more could be added. All deciduous to provide sun in winter and shade in summer. Elms and acacias, most likely.
The ground regains its continuous plane, seamlessly stitching together all the points that must remain at their current level. The result is a smooth, gentle topography that allows for accessible paths in multiple directions.

And the trees simply grow from the ground. The ground is a flat, earthen park of almost 3,500 m2 that receives water from neighboring roofs and drains toward the trees to contribute to their irrigation.
Only around the perimeter is the ground finished in stone, granite no doubt, another 1,800 m2. With luck, much of the plaza's existing granite could be recycled. In any case, it is completed or refined with regular, flame-finished paving stones, laid beautifully and expertly.
Intertwined with the branches, 25 light fixtures suspended from a network of cables leave the ground free of added elements. The only vertical elements in the space are the tree trunks. These lights are the same as those on Gran Vía; they are a model approved by the City Council, but suspended instead of on a pole. They are distributed in a substantially uniform manner throughout the plaza, without forming a matrix. There are also benches floating on this large, smooth plane. 36 in particular are made of wood and allow water to flow through. They orient themselves like boats in bays, practically in the same direction.
And all this under the watchful eye of 318 windows and receiving visitors at 41 shop doors and portals.

How many eyes look at the square! There's room for everyone. This square knows no age or obligation. It serves everything, and everyone is equally welcome.
A certain comforting certainty when approaching the arrangement of the (few) things emerges from the relationship between the apparent "distracted" randomness and an underlying pattern of order, as well as the spatial consequences of such a configuration. Hopefully, subtle.
Slight fluctuations occur in an otherwise homogeneous space. Flexibility, abstraction, and a certain "natural" ambiguity are intended. Ambiguity is pursued at the spatial and also conceptual level. It is difficult to identify the number of distinct spaces, or their specific purpose, or how and to what extent they merge with each other, where they begin or end; "a continuum of vaguely specific spaces," in the words of others.
Profusion, the relative position of the trees, and the vision of the subject who inhabits it, always the same and always different; A spatial situation that is unusual, yet we do not recognize it as entirely foreign. Space is reorganized through use, an emergent spatial order similar to that which arises in other open systems.