// Big Trip Spain 2026
The aim is to understand how the urban infrastructure around Spanish rivers were modified to accommodate challenging climatic conditions. Given the need for urban resilience in the face of global warming and climate change, we deem it essential that the urban fabric can withstand the changing climate and adapt with sustainable urban development that considers the river network and water flow.
Our research will involve mapping socio-ecological patterns, studying traces of human interactions, and everyday urbanism to document daily life in Madrid’s and Valencia’s urban fabric. By studying the rivers’ journeys through the lens of historical, cultural, and environmental shifts, we believe we would be able to learn more approaches to flood safety and enhancing urban river ecology from the two Spanish projects that are also focused on nature-based interventions, marking a shift from controlling the river to coexisting with it.
By exploring the discourse on how Madrid and Valencia redefined its urban landscape, this project emphasizes the value of community and adaptive, forward-thinking public space design within urban environments. It aims to understand the real life implications of these projects as they form instances of how environmental pressures lead to design choices. Documenting, through sketches, photography, and videography, we wish to enquire how different approaches to nature based solutions in the context of Spain equate to the Dutch room for the river approach, with the hope to learn how futurings from the past, evolve in the present and can change the course or urban river infrastructures through time.
Participants: Quazi Anika Afrin, Ojas Basargekar, Michele Francesco Bonato, Sanginee Gupta, Youjin Lee, Yishan Liu, Haruka Noguchi, Juli Osusky, Sanketa Kedar Sant, Varun Bapu Sudheendra, Thaleia Tomosoglou, Ganesh Umasankar
// Tracing the lives of rivers
In 1957, catastrophic flooding of the Turia River devastated Valencia, killing 81 people and submerging much of the city, prompting the municipality to reroute the river through a new southern channel to prevent future disasters. After that the abandoned old riverbed was proposed to become a highway to relieve city traffic but due to mass public opposition it was transformed into the Turia Gardens, a vast urban park developed from the 1970s onward. Today, this 9km green corridor is one of Europe’s largest urban parks, blending recreation, culture, and heritage while also serving a crucial flood-control function. Designed to handle extreme water volumes, it proved its effectiveness during record rainfall in October 2024, when the diversion channels reached near capacity but the city center remained protected as the park absorbed excess water. The park is a living monument of the resilience of the community and the testament of nature-based urban planning.
In 1974, Madrid completed its crucial 32.5 km inner ring road, a busy urban highway circling the city center, severing the connection of the city to its river. Adjusting its approach to environmental precedence and the challenges that accompany it, the Madrid Rio project shows how urbanisation in its “modernist” definition can go hand in hand with ecological urbanism, deprioritizing the car and making the river accessible to its cities’ citizens. Burying the six kilometer stretch of the M-30 ring road through this ambitious public space project of such scale, gave way to not only having a wide range of activities for the demographically multitudinous users but also connected the southern districts to the city’s center, becoming an example of urban design changing the urban planning by evaluate
the people’s need and a need for change.
// Screening
// Exhibition Images
// Vacation Pictures
// With, or without water
The transformation of urban river landscapes in the projects in Spain reveal how seemingly simple spatial decisions can produce vastly different urban environments. These urban atmospheres are shaped not only by design, but also by historical conditions, environmental forces, and the patterns of everyday life. What becomes evident is that design alone does not determine the identity of a “place”! Instead, each project evolves over time, where “space” gradually evolves and becomes place, formed by what remains and how people inhabit it.
Together, these projects highlight how cities can respond creatively to climate pressures and urban densification by reimagining rivers as vital public assets. Whether active or residual, rivers act as enduring frameworks that anchor identity, memory, and urban continuity. Rather than being over-engineered or neglected, they can be transformed into accessible corridors that generate ecologi-
cal, social, and spatial value. Madrid Río reconnects the city through infrastructural
intervention, while the Turia Gardens unify Valencia through a continuous green spine, demonstrating that different strategies can achieve equally meaningful outcomes.
Ultimately, these projects show that cities can transform challenges into opportunities by balancing infrastructure, nature, and social life. They underscore the role of both designers and users in shaping the urban realm, revealing that the most successful spaces are those that remain open to interpretation and change. By connecting city, nature, and history, Madrid Río and the Turia Gardens offer valuable lessons in how urban environments can evolve into vibrant, inclusive, and enduring places.
The trip was sponsored by:
