La Alhambra, a place for debate and reflection on architecture, landscape and the environment

This morning saw the inaugural session in a series of talks on Arquitectura, paisaje y medio ambiente (Architecture, landscape and the environment), organised by the University of Granada (UGR) Centro Mediterráneo to reflect on and debate new ways of interpreting and intervening in the landscape. From today until Friday, architects, art historians, biologists and ecologists will gather at the Palace of Carlos V to discuss the Alhambra and plans for its future, interventions in the Costa Tropical landscape and the relationship between landscape, city and environment in Granada.
María del Mar Villafranca, general director of the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG) opened the inaugural session, along with Juan Francisco García Casanova, director of the UGR Centro Mediterráneo, Ángel Gijón, architect and director of the course, and writer/editor Manuel Mateo Pérez, who presented the act. In her paper on the cultural landscape of the Alhambra, Villafranca advocated “promoting the protection of the landscape of the Alhambra” and defended “integral and active preservation of the Monument and its surroundings, particularly the Darro Valley, which is a very fragile ecosystem”.
Architect Pedro Salmerón concentrated on the Master Plan of the Alhambra, the route map drafted by himself and Villafranca for the future of the site up until 2015, while Juan Domingo Santos, architect and lecturer at Granada’s Higher Technical School for Architecture, spoke on Interventions in the landscape: the Alhambra Atrium, specifically the New Door project, the winning entry in the International Ideas Competition to design the future entrance pavilion to the site, an original idea which he developed in collaboration with renowned Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza.
The changing landscape of the Costa Tropical will be the main subject of debate on Tuesday. Thus, architects Juan Fernando Pérez and Alberto Martínez Quesada, the authors of Motril’s urban zoning plan (PGOU), will open the morning session with a talk on Motril-Mediterranean-Mountains, before handing over to environmental biologist Fernando Rodríguez Correal, who will speak on environmental influence on urban planning. To wind up, architects Yolanda Brasa and Eduardo Jiménez Artacho will give a brief sketch of the Marina Playa Granada project.