San Isidro Racecourse Linear Park

The Project “San Isidro Racecourse Linear Park” (Parque Lineal Hipódromo de San Isidro -PLSI) arises as a proposal for the current racecourse of San Isidro, which is privately owned. Our proposal is to obtain a linear park along the entire perimeter of the racecourse by means of some minimum interventions, therefore acquiring a new approachability to a green lung for the enrichment of the environment and the quality of life, functioning as a social inclusive nucleus.

We achieved our aim by eliminating the existing fence and creating a new one towards inside, opening the doors of the racecourse and providing informal sports facilities and stations that raise awareness about sustainability. The result is a park of linear rings that works as a social catalyst. Our intervention adapts to the different needs of the neighborhood, focusing on leisure and sports, as well as cultural activities in a sustainable green informal space.

The idea was to generate a low-cost intervention that has a minimum impact on the environment and has concern for heritage of the existing facilities of the racecourse. A setback of the existing fences will create a new intentional park. As there is not a single straight line that forms a space, we were able to move back some fences a little bit more, disconnected from the rigid net, creating new spatial configurations, without damaging the existing infrastructures and its collectivity.

The main design decisions were focused on the configuration of new paths differentiated according to specific activities as cycling, running, walking, and on the generation of diverse isles with different programmatic functions such as: spaces for leisure and gathering, as well as spontaneous sports activities, picnic areas, sanitary facilities, bicycles distribution stations and parkour areas distributed efficiently throughout the park. We designed a milestone building that functions as a sustainability lighthouse which seeks to raise awareness amongst the visitors about the importance of this theme.

Regarding the design, the main landscape decisions had as premise the conservation of the arboreal original species, which conservation and revitalization are a must for this project.

The new proposed vegetation was designed incorporating local trees that go well with the geometry of the routes and generating two types of meadow of spontaneous local species of different heights of great impact as a patch in the urban ecology.

These types of species performed a great energy exchange with the environment and are adapted to the local environmental conditions contributing to restore the original landscape of the pampas. The autochthonous fauna uses this type of flora for nesting and as a food source, that is why the implementation of local vegetal species helps to increase biodiversity. As these kinds of species are low-