The remodeling of Barcelona's Mercat del Ninot has been a much-talked-about project over the last year, but not much attention has been given to the temporary remodeling project of the public space between the Market itself and the Hospital Clínico. One year after its inauguration, the project by the LeA office, titled "La cinta roja" (The Red Ribbon), by architects and landscape architects Nicole Bongard, Elena Climent and Silvia Pujalte, creates a new square full of life and plants in a forgotten corner of the neighborhood.
This square temporarily occupies an unused lot. It is one of the actions included in the Microurbanizations program, promoted by the Barcelona City Council, which seeks to convert, with very little budget, vacant lots that do not have a defined use in the short term, into open spaces for use by residents.
The spontaneous vegetation found between the walls of the old fire station was a very powerful image of urban naturalization that inspired the team for the general proposal of the project. This small square, about one thousand square meters in area, reinterprets the old traces of the facility that previously occupied this lot, proposing a route through tall meadows formed mainly by grasses.
A red pavement of draining concrete crosses the mosaic of small plots that delimits the different planters. A unique feature of this project is that the proportion between landscaped surface and built area is very high, 3 to 1. With this project, the architects comment, "we move away from the standardization found in the design of public spaces that are so impermeable, gray and repetitive".
The selection of species is solved with a sequence of staggered blooms to create a variable landscape throughout the year. This season, you can see species at their peak such as **_Pennisetum alopecuroides_** , **\*Gaura lindheimeri \*\*\***Belleza \***\*'\*\***Dark Pink\***\*'** , **_Eragrostis spectabilis_** or **_Muhlenbergia capillaris_** .
Other species, such as **\*Gaura lindheimeri \*\*\***Belleza \***\*'\*\***White'\*\* have already finished their flowering and the brown flower stems remain near the **_Miscanthus_** , adding a dark tone to the color palette of this garden.
At other times of the year we will be able to see planters of more reddish tones formed by Centranthus ruber, Allium giganteum and Equinacea sp. or also _[Verbena bonariensis](http://www.salagraupera.com/es/cataleg/general/item/verbena-bonariense-2) _ and **_Perovskia 'Blue Spire'_** . The bluish, pink and purple inflorescences of these species will stand out in height and color over the Avenula pratensis and Pennisetum.
The six trees present in the space, catalpas and lindens, are specimens recovered from the municipal nursery, which had been removed due to affectation by other works, in coherence with the limited budget and the philosophy of environmental sustainability of the project: "Practical, temporary and proximity urbanism; which achieves the fit between the reversibility of the actions and their economic viability."
Like all landscape projects, it takes time for the vegetation to develop and the compositions to begin to take shape, but this square with the selection of species made, today, is already at its peak and has become an interesting space for urban revitalization. We encourage you to visit it and get lost among its tall grasses.
Images: Leaatelier.com / M. Galante