Formal and formless in Madrid Río Park

In the Madrid Río Park, two very different approaches to landscape design have been juxtaposed and coexist. The first project_designed by the group composed of MRío and WEST 8_was a staged space based on a rereading of several sites by the evocation of a series of symbolic figures in the city and territory. The second, by the Ecologistas en Acción group, utilized a process of ‘naturalization’ of the Manzanares to bring about a formless configuration of the river. Today, Madrid Río Park is the expression of the two very different projects, created ten years apart, enacting two strategies, each with its own very different language and aesthetic outcome; such is the profound complexity of the urban public space created, that the park has become a major case study. This essay will try to analyse its dual soul by addressing the notions of the ‘formal’ and the ‘formless’.