Cerro Amapola Urban Arboretum Park Master Plan

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The Cerro Ampola is one of the pronounced geographical aspects within the Laguna Carén property, due to its height and elevation, allows visitors to understand the vastness of the Santiago Valley and view the Carén property and the Cordillera de la Costa.

The proposal outlines the new park as an interdisciplinary platform and an attraction for families, neighbors, students, and the University of Chile community to facilitate the generation of answers to current and future challenges, both local and global. These attributes of the project correspond with the uses and programs that occur on the hill, which enhance the opportunities to create areas of conservation and environmental remediation for the western sector of Santiago.

The park has tourist, cultural, and scientific applications, making it a nucleus of development and conservation, where diverse programs converge and relate, forming a unique climate. The proposal considers a metropolitan scale, as the park has significant environmental, scientific, and cultural features.

To consolidate the proposal of the park, four design principles are defined to guide the program, layout, infrastructure, materialities, and proposed uses of the park:

01. Preservation of Nature

The ecological value of Cerro Amapola is protected due to the use of landscape ecology guidelines as a central pillar in the design and the appreciation of native species.

02. Research and Scientific Dissemination

The University of Chile uses Cerro Amapola to conduct research related to environmental forests and botanical sciences.

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03. Cultural and Environmental Education
Adding to the previous principle, Cerro Amapola strives to share scientific knowledge and environmental education that is accessible to all to help foster a culture of environmental care and sustainable lifestyles.

 

04. The University Community
Connections between multiple faculties are generated from differing perspectives within the university community through the multi-disciplinary territory.

According to the information above, the proposal adopts the name Cerro Amapola Urban Arboretum Park (PAUCA), to acknowledge its role as a collaborative space between the University of Chile and the inhabitants of Santiago, Chile. This space emphasizes scientific-botanical knowledge and is promoted through environmental conservation and reforestation in an urban environment with a lack of green areas.

 

The Arboretum, located on the southern slope of the property, forms the heart of the project, as it is the most relevant aspect since it houses native species from all the climatic zones of Chile with a series of footpaths and walkways that allow for journeys from various perspectives and promote environmental education. An emphasis on ecological education is present through a series of open classrooms, a bird observatory, an educational farm, an amphitheater, a kindergarten, and a meditation garden. In addition, four buildings frame the access area to the project: a Visitor Center, where there is also a cafeteria and administration, a Center for Evolution and Land History, a Center for Botanical-Forestry Research, and a Building of Rooms and Auditoriums. The other primary axis of the project is reforestation as a strategy to protect native species, based on the contributions and environmental remedies of companies, which allows for a plant consolidation of the hill. In this way, the rest of the programs were formed around the reforestation area on the hill, along with roads and paths with scattered viewpoints of the city and the Laguna Carén property.