Linear river park with flood-protection embankment

In the October 2024 flood, what held the water back along the edge of the town was a strip of slightly raised farmland, not a built defence. The cross-sections the studio measured along that edge show a freeboard of between a few centimetres and one metre above the water level, and at one point the bank was overtopped. The riverside edge has no properly sized embankment and is today largely abandoned farmland.

The studio proposes to turn that defence into public space: a flood-protection embankment built into a linear river park of around one kilometre that runs along the edge of the town. The defence stops being a wall and becomes a raised promenade, a viewpoint or a set of terraced steps. The park takes the strip expected to flood as part of its brief, with light surfacing, resilient materials and no obstacles to the flow, and with riparian planting arranged in bands according to its tolerance to water, working as a technical device rather than ornamental gardening.

The section comes before the plan: the levels associated with the different floods are fixed first, and the route is drawn afterwards. The starting criterion is protection against the 500-year flood with freeboard; the final level will depend on the hydraulic study and on prior consultation with the river basin authority. The embankment and the park are kept separate from the channel repairs because they do not restore a previous condition: they improve protection.

The special plan proposal, drafted by the studio, zones this edge as a public park designed to flood and provides for a green corridor along the watercourse. The studio set out and justified the measure in the reconstruction strategy, and is now working on the preliminary studies and the concept for the park, building on a site visit that recorded how the edge is used today —walking, running, cycling— and what it lacks: shade, benches and a continuous route.