2002

URBAN IDEAS FOR SANTO DOMINGO 2002
Restructuring Institutional Area
Ensanche La Fe. Articulations.

Santo Domingo. Dominican Republic
Surface: 67 ha
Organizer: National District Government

road diagram

The case of Ensanche La Fe presents an interruption of the urban continuity caused by the old hippodrome area. Over this area and throughout the recent history, a series of non-articulated pieces of equipment were implanted. Thus, the project for the urban articulation begins with a check-up of what exists in order to restructure it: an institutional zone with a lot of under-used land, the big baseball and boxing stadiums surrounded by parking lots, a hospital installation with its own logic, a mixture of densified local and uneven planned housing, in short, a disassembly of urban fragments. Therefore, a new general organization able to regulate the pre-existences and to receive new programs is proposed. This organization is achieved by turning the shape of the big urban void from a rectangle into an oval, which is at the same time an echo of the old hippodrome and defines and connects a series of new elements:

• The formalization of a big central park for the area dissolves the autonomy of the divergent elements, existing and proposed.
• The stadium square concentrates the most significant space in its interior, a focus for the rehabilitation of the area. Its centripetal shape symbolizes the convergence of the different programs.
• The institutional block builds a qualified border of the park. The existing governmental buildings will be complemented with new pavilions.
• The residential group builds borders, occupies voids, densifies the urban scene; it acquires different configurations giving an answer to the various forms of inhabiting.

Publication:
Ideas Urbanas para Santo Domingo
Editor: A. Vélez Catrain

park diagram

square diagram

institutions diagram

housing diagram

baseball stadium

connecting roof for the institutional block – sketch