Reclaiming the streets: the architects clawing back Europe’s car-centric spaces — SkimNews
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- European Prize for Urban Public Space shortlisted five finalists highlighting projects that transform car infrastructure into climate-resilient spaces, including roundabouts as splash pools and former car parks as gardens.
- Leopold Banchini's Round About Baths converted a Logroño, Spain roundabout fountain into a public bathing space built from uncut timber panels, but the installation stood only one week during the Concéntrico festival in June 2025.
- Banchini said his roundabout bath project could not be permanent because politicians "are really scared to touch anything with cars" for fear of losing votes, and bathers had to reach the fountain via a zebra crossing.
- Barcelona's Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes buried three thoroughfares of the former Glòries cloverleaf interchange underground to open the surface to green space.
- Antwerp's Zuidpark replaced a large free car park with an 800-metre green corridor whose 500 new trees and "rain gardens" of excavated bluestone now provide shade during heatwaves and collect extreme rainfall.
- Zuidpark still conceals a 2,000-space paid underground car park beneath its northern and southern wings, accessible from entry points outside the park — a compromise designer Bart Van Gassen said was necessary to make the park politically buildable.
- Portugal's Leça Green Corridor and Peace Park in Vicenza, Italy round out the five-strong shortlist for the biennial prize run by Barcelona's Centre de Cultura Contemporània with six other European architecture institutions.
Why it matters: The shortlist exposes the political ceiling on European car-removal: Banchini's roundabout bath lived only one week because politicians fear voter backlash, and even Antwerp's 2,000-space paid underground car park was deemed the price for building Zuidpark's 500-tree canopy at all. With European cities facing simultaneous heatwaves and extreme precipitation, the 15 October winner will spotlight which compromise — partial burial, underground parking, or pop-up temporariness — other municipalities copy.
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