The Water Park, Zaragoza by aldayjover

The Water Park: A living geography between city and river

In 2008, Zaragoza -the capital of Aragón- hosted the International Exposition under the theme “Water and Sustainable Development.” Located in the Ranillas meander along the Ebro River, the event not only reinforced the city’s connection to water but also triggered an unprecedented urban transformation, with significant public and private investments that substantially enhanced the quality of life in the city and its surroundings.

The Water Park was not conceived as a conventional park. It was not a design imposed upon the land, but rather a deep reading of the meander’s landscape, its agricultural memory, fluvial dynamics, and its potential as a bridge between city and river. From the outset, it sought to reconcile Zaragoza with the Ebro not through containment, but through coexistence; a pioneer in the urban riverfront restoration movement.

Created for the Expo, the park was envisioned as a space where water was not merely a resource or a scenic feature, but the very structure of the project. The existing hydraulic system -irrigation channels, canals, and gradients- was reinterpreted to filter, distribute, and return water to the river in a continuous cycle uniting ecology, engineering, and form. The soil, vegetation, and climate spoke, and the project listened: the riparian forest was restored and expanded, thematic gardens adapted to the environment were introduced, and uses were organized around leisure, nature, and environmental education.

The result was a 125-hectare metropolitan park that did not simply occupy agricultural land but revealed a strategy of geographical integration without imposing formal logic. A threshold between the consolidated city and the fluvial landscape, it combined intensively programmed areas -close to urban access- with zones more open to the river’s dynamics. A flexible space that embraced flooding as part of its function, offering a model of public space adapted to climate change, even before this concern had become a shared urgency.

Seventeen years after its inauguration, the Water Park remains Zaragoza’s most valuable and innovative green infrastructure. It is a refuge of biodiversity in both flora and fauna, whose resilience to flooding has been proven almost annually. Its international recognition endures, and the way it has been embraced by the public demonstrates that it is now fully embedded in the city’s life. The park has maintained its identity as an ecological corridor, metropolitan green lung, and public meeting ground; within a context very different from the one in which it was born. What once served as the threshold to the International Expo -a space defined by high visitor traffic and event logistics- has gradually given way to riparian nature. While some large areas remain available for occasional city-scale events, today, calmer zones prevail, mediating the transition from urban to natural.

Throughout this time, the park has continued to evolve. Some areas have changed or intensified their use, while others have revealed new needs in terms of maintenance, water management, or adaptation to emerging social and environmental challenges. Far from signaling decline, these changes reflect the vitality of the park and the ongoing need to care for it as a living space.

For this reason, under the direction of Zaragoza City Council and with the guidance of aldayjover, new strategies for restoration and adaptation are underway, framed by a vision of resilience. These efforts, which maintain the park’s functionality during river floods, aim to reinforce the ecological values that make the park unique, enhance its biodiversity, and improve thermal comfort in its more urban spaces. At the same time, there is a reassessment of certain areas that never fully achieved their intended use, now approached with feasible, sustainable solutions that respect the original spirit of the project.

This process does not represent a return to the past, but rather a new chapter: consolidating what works, correcting what is needed, and opening the park to new ways of being inhabited. Ultimately, it means continuing its evolution with the same principles with which it was conceived: dialogue with place, water as protagonist, and balance between nature and city.

The Water Park is not a finished object nor a postcard from the past. It is a landscape in transformation, an infrastructure that learns, a model for how to build cities through ecology. Today, as seventeen years ago, it remains a reference for Zaragoza and for other cities in search of more sustainable, livable, and holistic ways to coexist with their rivers.

• Award category you wish to submit to (Built landscapes, Revisited projects or Landscape and Architecture): Revisited projects

• Project typology: Metropolitan public park – riverbanks – park

• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
aldayjover architecture and landscape
Christine Dalnoky

• All architecture offices involved in the design:
aldayjover architecture and landscape

• Other credits:
Benedicto gestió de projectes (quantity surveyor), Taller de ingeniería ambiental (hydraulics), JG Ingeniería (systems), bis211 (structures), Artec3 (lighting)

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