Madrid Río

Recipients of the 2015 Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design:

Burgos & Garrido
Porras La Casta
Rubio & Álvarez-Sala
West8

Madrid Río illustrates the transformative potentials of architecture, landscape, urban design, and planning for the city of Madrid. The project particularly demonstrates a deft interplay between the sensibilities of urban design and landscape architecture in order to weave together disparate components of the city, ranging from  historic buildings and infrastructure, to vegetation at an immense scale. The space of the project facilitates  new forms of mobility while reconnecting neighborhoods that renew social relationships. The bridges, a  crucial element in the project, both literally and symbolically celebrate the proximity between previously  separated portions of the city. Importantly, the project invigorates civic space while creating room for new  architecture and innovative infrastructure interventions. The professional and pedagogical value of Madrid Río is that it demonstrates a collaborative design process that involves several firms, spanning the disciplines of urban design, planning, landscape, and infrastructure engineering. The project showcases the diverse  complexity of the economic, technical, political, logistical, and cultural challenges that were faced and  surmounted by Madrid Río’s designers and proponents in creating a wonderful public asset for the city of  Madrid.

— Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning

View the online exhibition.

About the Prize

The Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design is the foremost award recognizing achievement in this field. The award was established in 1986 on the occasion of Harvard University’s 350th anniversary, and the 50th anniversary of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Nominations for the prize are received from the GSD’s extensive network of academics and urban design professionals.

The prize is awarded biennially to recognize exemplary urban design projects. Projects must be more than one building or an open space built anywhere in the world within the last ten years that makes a positive contribution to the public realm of a city and improves the quality of urban life in that context. The project must also demonstrate a humane and worthwhile direction for the design of urban environments.

2015 Jury

Jury Chair, Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard GSD
Silvia Benedito, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD
Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture, Harvard GSD
Mirko Zardini, Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture