The competition for the Madrid Metropolitan Forest Project was formulated under the concept of a green infrastructure that will extend over 75 kilometers around the city. It is meant to contribute to the natural balance, to the reduction of CO2 emissions, to the fight against climate change, to the ecological and landscape restoration of degraded areas, and to increasing the offer of pedestrian and cycling itineraries, as well as benefiting the health of the population.
In response to the particular qualities of each area of Madrid, the competition defines five different lots with geographical continuity, potential availability of land, and opportunity to configure the concept of a peri-urban green corridor.
CAMBIUM is our proposal for the challenge in the east of Madrid: to generate connections in a fragmented territory. The only existing continuity is the mobility infrastructures, which we can use build a strategy to create a forest over 15 years, in 4 steps:
1. Generate the logistics of the forest by transforming mono-functional infrastructures into corridors that are capable of cleaning water and producing living soils, and that will grow connected roots.
2. Make existing places more accessible so they can be cared for: remove fences, create accessible paths, generate connections.
3. Trees enable people to forge links with the forest. We plant mature trees that offer shade and shelter, accompanied by a constellation of environmental facilities in a process of ecological succession.
4. As a result, a lasting and self-sustaining affective bond can be built between the infrastructures, the city, the people, and the trees.
We see the forest as the virtuous collaboration of everything and being. Life will be able to fully participate in the Metropolitan Forest in the city. Just as the CAMBIUM of a tree, Madrid can develop its tissue, to make it grow and give life at the same time in a sustainable way.
